The Ghost Patriot
by BrownEyedGirl87
Summary: Widowed Victoria Lawson finds herself fighting alongside a South Carolina militia to earn payment after her husband's death, and to earn her own keep since left poor and can't make travel up north to be with her Loyalist parents. Perhaps revenge for her rebel relatives is her motivation as well, but finding friends and love during her time serving was not expected. SkunkXOCXJean
1. Prologue

**Note: My OC not real, but she consists of three or more factual people (women from that same time) upon her creation much like the character Benjamin Martin was based off in the film.**

 **The song listed in this is "One Morning in May" - a 17th/18th century folk song.**

 **This fanfic was made up out of pure imagination, particularly when I saw how many 'inaccuracies' there were in the movie (that means a lot of creative freedom lol), and when I saw Skunk (one of the militia men) who had a wide role in the film, but was kept to the back because, of course, the Martin family and Tavington for example being the main characters. I've always had an eye out for the background characters, and thinking to myself and deciphering 'what is their story?' Obviously, for this movie, it sparked motivation in me to write (more stories… that shall be finished one day. Fanfiction has become my ultimate hobby and home to my several stories). The 18** **th** **century/period dramas have been favorite of late, and the tallest man in the shady colonial tavern caught my eye and so, here I am. Not many Skunk/OC fanfics on here… maybe none lol, but not anymore. I will do my best to have everyone recognized from the film itself and to keep this as one of my detailed fanfics as I plan. I hope you all enjoy!**

 **Prologue: Overture**

 _One morning, one morning, one morning in May, I spied a young couple, they were making their way…  
One was a maiden so bright and so fair and the other was a soldier and a brave volunteer…_

 _Good morning, good morning, good morning said he, And where are you going my pretty lady?  
I'm going out a-walking on the banks of the sea, Just to see the water's glide and hear the nightingale sing._

 _Now they had not been standing but a minute or two—When out of his knapsack a fiddle he drew._

 _And the tune that he played made the valleys all ring, Oh hark, cried the maiden, hear the nightingale sing._

 _Oh maiden, fair maiden, 'tis time to give o'er._

 _Oh no, kind soldier, please play one tune more—For I'd rather hear your fiddle at the touch of one string, Than to see the waters glide and hear the nightingale sing._

 _…_

 _Oh soldier, kind soldier, will you marry me?_

 _Oh no, pretty maiden, that never shall be. I've a wife down in London and children twice three—Two wives and the army's too many for me._

 _Well, I'll go back to London and I'll stay there for a year. It's often that I'll think of you, my little dear—And if ever I return it will be in the spring, Just to see the waters glide and hear the nightingale sing.  
To see the waters glide and hear the nightingale sing…._

* * *

 **~ Victoria's POV ~**

If I could only see the looks on their faces now, they would have no idea who I am because of how much I have changed—more than I had living under their roof. My new appearance however has caused some rough rumor to spread more so than my old fashionable looks, which was the essence of pleasant rumor any woman would dream to hear. Those days, now, are far behind. Am I proud of it? No. But am I happy? I suppose. The decisions I have made all up until now have had my mind in a boggle.

It seemed like yesterday when my parents had sent me away to live with my uncle and aunt in Charleston, South Carolina. The number of British officers beginning to slowly take up the southern state was perhaps some of their reasoning. They (Loyalists) would like me to find a suitor with the help of my (Patriot) aunt and uncle. So much for that working out. How could they have not known they were Patriot before sending me still haunts me to this day.

As for their other reasoning to send me away of which I know all too greatly, is because of my spirited mannerisms, and because I was highly as I got older of the pompous, high pitched British voices toadying over me in proper decorum of high society. And, obviously, I was not allowed to be myself. They all could not accept that I was not a woman to be tamed, or kept tamed.

...


	2. Chapter 1: One Morning in Charleston

**Chapter 1: One Morning in Charlestown**

The silent and seemingly empty house shining bright white and yellow due to the sun's mid-day rays pour through the broad windows in the front. The long gallery upon entrance to the house also aglow, light dust floating with the heated waves bouncing against family portraits. If anyone who had not been in the heart of Charleston moments prior and crossed past the small yet lavish southern house from the outside just then, they would look and wonder why there was no sound coming from it, or movement.

There was always a sound coming from the Gossett home. At least there used to be.

"Miss?"

The enslaved woman knocks on the freshly painted door of her proprietor's room. At last minute realizing it was still wet paint, she withdraws her hand and wipes on her apron the buttery white paint off her hand. This mess is better than coarse wood and chips of paint peeling off every door in the worn-down home that needs remodeling all on the inside.

"Miss, please open the door. I'm sorry to disturb in your time of mournin'. But you must come out... Don't lock yourself in when we can't get to you."

The worried woman tries the doorknob repeatedly, even sighing and reaching into her tied up hair to pull out a hairpin to pick the lock.

On the other side of the door is a dark room with parchment littered across the floor, and a young woman not even of twenty years sits hunched on the top of her hay and horsehair filled bedding, currently pale in complexion and catching her breath from reading the unexpected news on a newspaper for the hundredth time in the same morning. A clipping of the morning paper, more like, which consists of casualties in the North Carolina military. South Carolina was uninvolved in the war currently.

"Mrs. Lawson, please unlock the door," the slave on the other side tries the handle, worried the newlywed woman had driven herself crazy.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of coming out of my quarters at this time?!" The tear stained woman all but barks back as she rubs at her puffy cheeks and rakes her fingers through her messy honeyed brown locks completely undone from its fine updo just styled _this morning_!

"A Colonel Burwell is here for a moment's talk with you. He knew your husband—Mrs. Lawson?"

The door slowly groans open ten seconds later, revealing the breathless, heartbroken woman for the first time since she ran back to her house and locked herself up. It took a lot of bravery to believe what she was reading was true. Of course, the town news' persons wouldn't tell lies, but for some minutes she had considered it. Because why would her husband be killed so quickly? Could he be dead? After being married for only six days, it felt… wrong. Unfair.

The poor beginning of this horrible war developing down south has not earned many good commentaries. As for the far north where the main body of fighters are raging, it had even greater fearful and loyal colonists protesting the entire war. All the way from turning against one's neighbor and even own family members, much like her family when they learned of _her_ actions. Her parents sit in British claimed Philadelphia like royalty while she was sent half a year ago to her once Loyalist aunt and uncle to be shaped into the proper lady of her time. As if Philadelphia couldn't restrain her like her parents could not. Restrain her how? Only residing in her mansion of a home, or at every ball an invite was thrown at them. Invites were every week, it never mattered where the ball was.

Much to her distress, she was not viewed as the very lady her parents planned for her to be. A lady blind to those lower than her title, including women, using her silence for attraction and intelligence, looks and good manner to obtain a wealthy husband to maintain the pedigree of both sides, and other than that… 'feigning big-headed fakeness', as her childhood self-called it and she still calls it as it is. That entire lifestyle unsettled her so much, some mornings she'd have thrown up because of anxiety.

Once she had grown past sixteen, she had decided to behave as her real self would… Blunt, comfortable, mindfully confident—with kindness and manners where necessary. The world took a turn for her when she was spotted flirting with a young man, not as high in society as her family, and he was a known debater debating on all the 'wrong' things. In short, he was a proud Patriot.

Being raised in South Carolina a _rebel_ unbeknownst to her parents for this rather short amount of time only proven she had not let go of her 'wild attitudes.' The letters they have shared were not the most pleasant of sights, especially since she had no idea how to write then. This was when being silent but coming off as intelligent came in. Now, she can barely make four sentences at length with words she is familiar with how to spell. Her good ears are what have made her a quick one. Gossip, rumor, conversations—she knows her words greatly.

Sitting by the fire during the cold winter after her arrival not even a month earlier from that point in time was when she found security and love from family that used to be considered distant. Victoria even had dreams at her old home before being sent away of her aunt and uncle being snobbish just as her own parents. If she wouldn't cooperate, they'd give her a new dress, or if she didn't see what she liked in the seamstress's books, they'd order silk or brocade from London and have it made to her special needs. Truly, that used to be her life at her real home, and not all the time was she given dresses and fine fabrics.

Her aunt and uncle's quaint small mansion turned out to be called her real home instead. And they were so very much like her. This quick observation scared her to no end, and after their deaths in later time, she considered to revert to how her parents wanted her to be. She felt lost for the first time in her life.

However, that was not the outcome. The outcome, because of the best part of being raised by her once distant family members—Instead of materialistic things she received, she instead received motivation, praise, confidence, and love. This has and always will conquered all.

Nevertheless, after the death of her uncle by a British soldier, and the capture of her aunt, she was left alone until she met her blue coated husband that sorrowful day her aunt was taken from her sights forever.

 _"You have the most beautiful hair I've ever seen, my lady,"_ were the first words her young, late husband said to her when they met. His rough interior covered by the appeal of a blue coat walked towards her in her stunned and distressed state. The blue uniform caught her eye first, and then she immediately met his eyes. _"And your eyes just as great of beauty though they should not be alight with grief and sorrow. Would it be wrong to fall to my knees before you?"_

 _"Corporal! Have yourself condoned of your brash behavior and return to the front at once."_ The words of his commander and other fellow men fell away when he shook his head at their orders, and stood stock still—soldierly—before her with concern in his features, ensuring she is or will be alright.

 _"I am no monarch, sir. While falling before me wouldn't look right to any of us Patriots, you may take my hand. The proper greeting to a Charleston lady,"_ she answered slowly as she confidently extended her hand out to him, meeting his dark brown eyes dark as her own. With a frown also matching his concerned but kind one, he took her hand and raised it to his thin lips with a cut on the upper one.

 _"And kiss your ring? I'm afraid there is no ring, my lady. Perhaps that will change one day."_

 _"Perhaps,"_ she founded herself blushing and the smallest of smiles began to form on her lips at his serious wit.

"You don't want me to fix your hair up?"

Mrs. Lawson, not anymore, a wonderful ' _Mrs_.' shakes her head. Her head throbbing and her stomach queasy. She reaches in her dress pocket for a handkerchief, her husband's he had given to her before he left (six days ago!) which makes her begin to choke back a cry once more.

"He's gone!" She sobs aloud, with no more control over her emotions once again.

The heat from the spilling sun burns her sticky tears to her face, and the handkerchief numbly blots the rest up. The slave takes the widow's hand sorrowfully and leads her through the hallway to the main entrance to greet a blue coated man with good intentions. Though it is something to be appreciated, the slave thinks her mistress would not be that tolerable to be around so soon. The strict looking officer just may not have patience with her grievances, even though he did know her husband somehow.

* * *

"I cannot express my sympathies enough to a young lady, who had lost her brave husband so soon." Colonel Harry Burwell address her politely standing from his offered chair gentlemanly. "Mrs. Lawson, it is a privilege to meet you. I offer all of my condolences to you."

"Colonel," she bows her head, remembering what her close house servant has said of him. The handkerchief folded in front of her dress with her hands. The tears had stopped the moment she saw him coming to a stand. "Everyone loses someone so soon. More so now that there is _war_ in these parts we naively didn't think to come true _._ What was he in the middle of during his final hours, dare I ask?"

The Colonel folds his hands hesitantly behind his back, but his hesitance not noticed by the young lady who had just asked her servant to leave them be for now. After the other woman had left, her footsteps falling fainter and fainter down the hall to other parts of the house, he willingly answered her desperate question knowing she would ask of this, but not before making sure she was completely fine with details.

"Shall I say all, my lady?"

"Yes, please," she nods her head shakily, looking ready to hear but not ready at the same time.

"He was part of a troop far north of here, camping for the night in the woods, and sometime during the night he was dragged out of his tent and promptly killed by a British Lighthorse unit by surprise."

A delirious and dark laughter leaving her lips was not what the older man was expecting in response.

"You're mad," she speaks above a whisper in denial. "Those redcoats wouldn't dare do that horrid and uncouth of a thing." _Dragging her husband out of a tent?! Heaven's no!_

He takes a step closer, seeing this with every ounce of apprehension he has and ready to catch her if she should fall to the floor to sob or faint, "I assure you, it is the truth."

"Why could that not have been avoided? Why was no one on watch!"

"There was, Mrs. Lawson. But they were killed. It wasn't fair. It's never fair."

"No, it isn't. It really isn't," she turns her body the slightest to the side, looking away from the man but her left ear facing him. If she was clinging to every word he is saying this far, it was going through one ear and clearly spilling out the other. His words she can accept settling in her racing mind. "It should be. Aren't there rules of war for this!?"

"There are. And unfortunately, they had every right just as we do to do the same to them—should had any side broken the rules of war first. Whenever we get the upper hand can we be successful. You know this, Mrs. Lawson."

She shudders then, her left arm lifting to fold just beneath her breasts and her right elbow perching above her left-hand so that her dominant hand may hold up her sinking head, shedding tears once more.

"Do I know it or what, sir. What is unfortunate is I had never known what the upper hand is like, and _we_ , some of us starving patriots, probably never will in this state. We are just waiting to be taken over just like my aunt-"

Colonel Harry Burwell is standing right in front of her now, his thudding boot steps one of the sounds flowing cleanly through her ears. If he is to be called it, he's like a ghost right now to Victoria. This man she hardly knows has come to her house right after she had found out of her husband's death. And here he is, now in front of her with his hands gently on her shoulders like a father would hold his daughter. A wonderful, warm feeling she felt from only her uncle.

"You will know it one day, Mrs. Lawson. Me and many other men are fighting for it and your independence," he whispers soothingly down to her. "Your husband doing what most of us wouldn't have done, I admit. Traveling to the deepest of woods and attacking British footmen. Presumably the ones who had taken your aunt and killed your uncle."

Victoria couldn't help but let a smile slip through on her frowning lips, sealed thinly shut but finally smiling at the once every day thought of her husband- when not busy when in town before they married- he'd take her for walks in the woods and talk about the unusual things he has seen. Simply, her husband loved the woods and nature, to its simplest form. A complete opposite to her usual plushy cushioned and silk wearing life with a roof always overhead. Yes, she still lived this life in her aunt and uncles home—smaller, but she was given freedom to walk about, and speak to whoever whenever.

"How I knew him?" the golden brown-haired man soon sports a small smile on his withered face, catching her smile. "We met briefly in my own camp. His superior had just scolded him for writing when he should have been issuing muskets and readying for the eventual patrol he would partake in. When I went to check on the scene, it was all dismissed from there. He thought he had a moment to spare to write you."

From his blue coat pocket with thick white trim, the old colonel revealed a letter to her folded perfectly in half but crinkled from the journey it has been on. "This was left behind in my camp. When I had heard news of the late troop, his name sounded familiar. Then linking it to the non-involved South Carolina, with the woman who he spoke about all the time, I was coming here already, and thought it'd be something to… ease your sorrow. He had forgotten it as that day grew arduous and blistering in the Carolina heat I still haven't accustomed to."

"No one has, sir," she chuckles fleetingly taking the letter from him engraved with the last words of her husband that he never got to send to her. "The locals here are the strongest I've met out of every city I've been too in past times. Though some of them are not too keen on war still, others are afraid to believe in the cause."

"Indeed," the colonel seemed to have took close word to this. Victoria even looking up at his slowly changing tone to one of a war soldier once more. "You are one of the strong locals, I know this as did your husband. As was he, may he rest in peace."

"Yes, may he," her voice trembles out just before he speaks once more.

"With that note, I'm afraid I must also say you will not be receiving any proper payment for your husband's service for some time. Your marriage happening six days ago has yet to be recognized as well as many other families that have been married long before the war ever started. Since he was a troop directed by another commander, I'm afraid I can't offer any push. We're all in a pinch."

"I—I didn't think we'd dive right into this today, sir. Do we—" _Of course we have to speak of it!_ She thinks to herself. "I can't be rude, but how long is _some time_? I will be caring about that soon once… this all passes."

"Several months, at least. But Congress will come through—"

"Not in time! Sir, I—I've been left with my uncle's house—my husband and I didn't even get the chance to own a house or build. But I still need to pay tax. I need to continue funding the army should we ever and my town."

"I am aware you come from a family of well monetary means. They can help you I'm sure," the colonel tries to remind her from what he has been told by others. She was a northerner much like himself living in the south. But the oddest reason was that her parents sent her to live here. Why would they do it?

"Yes, that is true. But it is not just money, it is not mine to give. I can't— my aunt and uncle didn't leave anything behind for me, and my parents haven't spoken to me in months. I am alone here without any family!" she worriedly cries out. The stress and weight of everything happening to her lonely self-dawning on her. "I'm sorry, Colonel, sir. You don't have to hear this. I shouldn't be venting out all my woes onto you. Who do I speak to? What do I do?"

"I would most definitely oblige you to speak to your local reverend, a priest… Let him give you his blessing, give you advice on where to go from here, and when you are ready you must find something to do with your time. Work is not hard to find. Become an apprentice to a shopkeeper or apothecary, there are many of them here in Charleston."

"They're all family run, sir. They wouldn't want to pay a… stranger and give me salary when money is hard to find already. Besides, they see me as wealthy and not in any state to work by my own hands! I don't know how to work!"

"Are you telling me they wouldn't give you a chance? It can't be everyone-"

"That is exactly what I'm saying. I was never given a chance in my life," she bites her lip, thinking of her parents once more. "Chances like _that_. I'll lose my reputation is what else— my God, I'm a widow, now. Every moment that passes it hits me and hurts even more. I'm a widow!"

She then feels ashamed for her behavior in front of this man. This is when having some etiquette would be nice.

"Colonel Burwell, my apologies. You did not need to hear that."

"My lady, please. Accept my condolences and my time being here. It is not often a military officer would be able to speak to the wife or family about the fallen."

"I do accept. I appreciate you very much for coming. Thank you," she says kindly through a stiff mouth.

He bowed his head, forgivingly if she is sensing his warmth correctly. Her face feels hot from embarrassment and out of all the crying she has done in front of him.

"If I may ask, _Mrs. Victoria_ , would you like to accompany me to the South Carolina General Assembly to address a levy on supporting the Continental Army?"

She meets his eyes sharply, surprised. The General Assembly was all the talk this morning when she was in town. "A woman may go to that convene?"

"Yes, to sit with the rest of the public where they can find an available seat or given one," he responds. "You will have one saved should you like to be escorted by me. I think it would not only be best for you to witness my important address, but ensuring the public one of its affected citizens are well."

Victoria to her surprise had found herself accepting. He was right about this, that it would look good she went, and to maintain whatever reputation she has in this town. Even running from her past of not worrying over herself, the past still pokes her from behind and steps in front of her like a teasing sibling. Sadly, reputation is and possibly always will be greatly important, much like character. Perhaps that is good, because character is important to keep in all good ways.

 **A/N: There will be more to come soon. Some of you may be wondering why Skunk for the pairing. I personally think it is different, and will come to light in time what my OC needs or desires in her life. Love? That will come up in the next chapters on what she would like. And, depending on how this story will turn out, and what reviews say, maybe she could end up with a certain French guy or Benjamin Martin. For now I have a Skunk pairing in mind- there's other militia men whose stories were not told! :) I hope you are all enjoying it so far! Feel free to review, I would love to know what you think.**

 **Thank you! :)**


	3. Chapter 2: The Levy and Loss

**Chapter 2: The Levy and Loss**

 ** _Later that day_**

"Our first order of business-"

 _"And our last, if we vote a levy!"_ Cheers from men on either side of the room yell out in agreement or disagreement while the judge silences them all with a slam of his gavel.

Victoria Gossett Lawson rolls her eyes off to the side quickly, but darts her eyes down to the floor and shuts them when the gavel banged the desk too loudly. Her once dying headache worsening now. The eyes of familiar Charleston men looked her way before the convene, eyeing the little hints of black clothing she adorns making her sit even straighter in her wooden seat, and made the blood in her head pump further.

Never in her life has she been in the presence of so many men in this town! Well, it was nearly all of them for this huge event. Did it help that they wore all black too as proper? One would think she'd blend in quite nicely, especially since she found herself sitting by the huge divided/bow windows, pouring in the sun that has been following her since morning. It is too late to give up her seat and leave, so she feigns confidence letting out one more breathless sigh.

It is right she is to be here; this the Colonel was all too right about. It was nice to hear a debate for a change and be in front of the public after she ran home clutching the paper in hand. In a way, she felt she did herself and her late husband honor for appearing here not ashamed or mortified. Though, she really is. Now she thinks she should be home grieving—and sobbing more at the thoughts of not having a proper funeral for him. It would be an empty grave.

"Order, order! Mr. Simms, you do not have the floor. First, an address by ColoneI Harry Burwell of the ContinentaI Army. ColoneI Burwell…" The speaker announces and introduces the Colonel.

Her escort sitting towards the far front had stood, and went to stand in the middle of the floor and facing them all with a grave face. His age showing more now in the evening light and discussing the already tiring conversation of war. Speaking unhurriedly in short sentences made it all the more tiring yet nerve wrecking.

"You all know why I'm here. I'm not an orator. And I would not try to convince you of the worthiness of our cause. I'm a soldier. And we are at war. From Philadelphia, we expect a declaration of independence. Eight of the thirteen colonies have levied money in support of a Continental army. I ask that South Carolina be the ninth."

 _"Massachusetts and Virginia may be at war, but South Carolina is not!"_ The tall but chubby Mr. Charles O'Hara stood to speak against the Colonel.

 _"Hear, hear!"_ the people in agreement shout out to the man's disruption causing a debate to break out which unnerved Victoria to hear, especially those with the comments of not supporting the Continental Army.

"This is not a war for the independence of one or two colonies, but for the independence of one nation," Colonel Burwell quickly said in response to begin to try speaking sense into the men who are against their state being involved in the war.

"And what nation is that?" Wilkins, a wealthy landowner, had stood as well, questioning the Colonel and the room.

The shortly stout Mr. Peter Howard stands abruptly from his place to the far-left side of the room, in defense of the man who spoke prior to this one, he retorted, "An American nation!" The supporting men around him cheer him on and pat his back, the movement making his already messy wig stick out white hairs even more.

"There is no such nation and to speak of one is treason," Wilkins scolds Mr. Howard but civilly.

"We are citizens of an American nation and our rights are being threatened by a tyrant 3000 miles away," Mr. Howard continues just as civil and respectfully. Colonel Harry Burwell, seeming pleased by what he is hearing thus far in what outbursts he can understand when there was no shouting is looking on silently.

"Would you tell me, please, Mr. Howard..." another man stands up, but not abruptly as the others have. Victoria's eyes light up recognizing who it is. "…why should I trade one tyrant for 3000 tyrants one mile away?"

After a couple seconds of silence, people were thinking over his words, the ones who understood the hidden humor all too well roared with fits of laughter.

"An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can," the man adds lastly once the laughter died down, going to sit down thinking he is done and his words had helped finish the entire assembly.

The Colonel's silent pleasure fell away at the sound of the venerable voice, looking to his right into the crowd at a familiar face he saw enter the assembly, but did not expect to hear him say such. He now calls him out, "Captain Martin, I understood you to be a patriot."

"If you mean by "patriot," am I angry about taxation without representation?" The dark-brown haired man appears taken aback. "Well, yes, I am. Should the American colonies govern themselves independently? I believe they can, and they should. But if you're asking me am I willing to go to war with England then the answer _is most_ _definitely no_."

Victoria straightens in her seat at the now denser air and mumbled choruses of ' _he's right'_ around her. Some like her took insult to his words. A man all for the cause but not for the fight to win if she is hearing correctly? That man knows very well what he has said, holes all in it, and how wrong he is. If there is war, already, there is war for a reason. Benjamin clearly can't see the reason and/or accept it.

Benjamin Martin was known by her and her aunt and uncle, they even traded crop for money. And for once there was something in common between the two individuals after a while of her living there—who her aunt saw fit for her niece to marry if she hadn't been taken by the British: Benjamin became widowed in 1773, and her niece had taken a shine to him when she had met him finally. But she did not know this until a few days later.

 _I'm a widow_ , she currently repeats like a mantra in her head. _I'm too young._

"This from the same Captain Benjamin Martin whose fury was so famous during the Wilderness campaign?" The Colonel's quarrelsome tone shook Victoria out of her depressing thoughts.

"I was intemperate in my youth."

Victoria's laugh quickly covered with a real sounding cough. It helped plenty he didn't back down and remained blunt. She couldn't see Benjamin's face, as she is sitting in the crowd staring at his back, but she supposed he still looked self-confident as he always looked.

"Temperance can be a convenient disguise for fear," a new man's voice chimed in from her side of the room. His eyes bulging out of his curly ginger haired head looking at her since she walked in on the Colonel's arm and was seated.

"Mr. Middleton, I fought with Captain Martin under Washington in the French and Indian War. There's not a man in this room or anywhere for that matter, to whom I would more willingly trust my life," the Colonel surprisingly spoke up in Benjamin's defense.

"There are alternatives to war. We take our case before the king. We plead with him," Benjamin states evenly.

Victoria holds back a sigh as she unfolds her fan and begins to wave it towards her face. Her ears are exasperated from hearing all this 'back and forth' talk. No wonder she was always kept at the house and tending to its care and servants unless she was taken out with her aunt and uncle for lively celebrations that would earn her the chance to being freely her. It's the competence of man who can sit in one of these 'silly' meetings without need for a fan, and as for the ones who know their facts, they can speak out. Unlike her… At least the colonel is speaking her thoughts exactly. The conclusion was inevitable, they must join the war!

"We tried," The Colonel states as obviously as possible without seeming rude.

"Well, then, we try again and again if necessary to avoid a war!"

Hearing the slight panic in the man's voice, the colonel steps closer to speak more straightforward, and to finally come out with it all. Surely this will gather everyone's attention and reach a great conclusion.

"Benjamin, I was at Bunker Hill. The British advanced three times and we killed 700 at point-blank range and still they took the ground. That is the measure of their resolve. If your principles dictate independence, then war is the only way. It is come to that."

 _"Hear, hear!"_

"I have seven children," Benjamin's voice almost broke, at least to her ears. She doesn't blame him for this thinking this way at least. Her slowly thudding heart feeling his reach out to anyone in this room who understands. She does, but does she agree? She wasn't too sure anymore. Her spouse's influence in her life changed her. "My wife is dead. Now, who's to care for them if I go to war?"

"Wars are not fought only by childless men, or widowed men."

That word. _Widow_. It will forever not be her favorite.

"Granted. But mark my words. This war will be fought not on the frontier or on some distant battlefield, but amongst us. Among our homes. Our children will learn of it with their own eyes… and the innocent will die with the rest of us… I will not fight, and because I will not fight, I will not cast a vote that will send others to fight in my stead."

"And your principles?" The Colonel catches him before he sits down. He stares at him trying to press anymore he can out of him in attempts to take his words and steer him in the right direction.

"I'm a parent. I haven't got the luxury of principles," Benjamin bowed his head and took his seat, finally.

Victoria clenched the side of her dress in a fist, closing her fan with her other hand and clenching that as well. Now the man just sounds senseless. Well, he did admit himself he was intemperate in his youth. She has not been here long enough to witness it fully, or around him enough, but he may yet still be.

"We must vote to levy!"

After one more little banter, Wilkins, Mr. Howard, and Mr. Middleton being the main voices of the room since Benjamin remained silent, the voting came. Victoria kept her hand down with the other women and children. It came to 'twenty-eight to eleven.' Eleven pounds.

South Carolina was officially involved in the war.

* * *

Walking out of the building, arm in arm with the older colonel, Victoria's soft jawline is tilted off to the side away from the decorated officer at her side, avoiding the snooping gazes of people looking at her blonde sunhat with black silk tied in a bow around its rim, and a thin, silk shawl over her thistle coloured dress accentuating her healthy glow and tiny waist. She has yet to have a black mourning gown made for her, as many of her clothes are at her home in Philadelphia. But the color black? On a dress? She feels faint at the thought of wearing it for a year… or longer if she feels the burst of depression hit once more by the end of a year. It would truly feel like then that she wasn't living with black brocade floating about her feet and wrapping her up like a sodden timber log.

Gunshots ring out in cheer for the levy and the future free nation of America. This was some positivity in her life.

"I do not intend on staying outside for long, Mrs. Lawson," Colonel Burwell begins. His all-knowing and thoughtful voice comforting her anxiety for but a second, but it doesn't cause her to turn her attentions to him. "Thank you for allowing me to escort you to this momentous event, and warning me prior to getting here of the ones who are against the cause still. But I will most appreciate and like to—"

"I do not intend on staying outside for long either, sir," Victoria interrupts, knowing what he was about to ask. Ask for her continued company, of course. To ease her sorrows and give her fresh air? "Of course, it was my honor to have been in your company and been invited to this… now celebration," she let a smile slip onto her pink lips at the sight of young men and boys racing each other to the table set up accepting the signatures of those volunteering themselves to fight. She has never seen a man so eager in his life to go after something so deadly.

Thinking her same thoughts going by their facial expressions are those of the men against the levy near the building, appalled at the audacity of the young boys being allowed by their fathers to sign up in the first place for a country that 'should not exist in this manner.' The ones who were for it, they looked every bit terrified, but proud that the main vote casted and winning caused many to enlist before them all. Mothers cried, fathers even cried, but they were grateful for what time they have now before seeing their sons off.

"I shall not be able to celebrate the remainder of the day. I need to return home. Tend to it, and speak to my current servants."

"Then I will not press further," he conforms. "Of course. But should you… ever need anything—"

"You have done all you could have. Now it's just in the hands of the Lord and Congress to comfort the rest of myself, and also in my own hands to heal myself. I shall see you again on-" the sound of boots scraping against the gravel makes her silent. Benjamin Martin joins in their walk, tilting his hat to her.

"Miss Gossett," Benjamin exclaims in greeting, surprised to see her on the Colonel's arm leaving the building.

"Mrs. La—" The colonel goes to correct but Victoria interrupts quickly and numbly once more.

"No, he's not wrong, Colonel. Back to what I was six days ago. Seven, I've already lost count. Benjamin," she remembers to tilt her head to him in greeting, but it's also farewell. Gathering her light purple skirts she hurried off. "Excuse me, gentlemen."

"I'm—I'm so sorry," Benjamin calls after her after taking a second to realize what she said and him to notice she is adorning the color black around her waist and hat, but the Colonel waves him off from going after her.

"She'll be fine. I've spoken to her prior to the general assembly and gave her consolation."

"Officers can do that now?"

"They always could have," the colonel responds wryly. "Some just can't make the time, not allowed, not allowed the time… You have shown no mercy to do so in the past, but today your words said otherwise."

"Not until I… was affected."

"We're all being affected now, even _amongst our homes_. Mrs. Victoria greatly so, if she is to find no source of payment, she will lose her uncle's house I'm afraid if Congress doesn't reimburse the soldier's families soon enough. Her husband was taken too soon. Their marriage had only begun. She may not be acknowledged I fear."

Benjamin Martin swallows thickly, his head looking abruptly to his right at the colonel's face to see his face is as serious as his word.

"So was her aunt and uncle—taken too soon," Benjamin adds solemnly, thinking of the young, spirited lady he had met when she first arrived here. They haven't talked however since her uncle's death. It wasn't until later time when her aunt was taken.

" _Now who is to care for her_ … a young widow," the colonel repeats the words of the same man walking next to him.

"You have good memory, are you sure you are no orator?" Benjamin began jokingly, with a frown still plastered on his bronzed farming face. "Her parents care nothing about her, this I know. How can someone not love their own children is beyond myself, nevertheless her. But she will not lose her home. She is not alone. We are a good community and will aid her until all is well."

"I knew you would say so, and I uphold you to that even if you don't uphold my words. He's as imprudent as his father was at his age."

The shift in conversation shaking him from his thoughts about the woman they were just talking about. Benjamin glances back up from looking down at his feet, and looks to where the middle-aged man is eyeing, and it is his son Gabriel signing up.

"Regrettably so."

"I'll see to it that he serves under me. Make him a clerk or quartermaster, something of that sort," The Colonel honestly says, also trying to ease the man's tension.

"Good luck."  
"You need it more than I, Benjamin."

* * *

"Mrs. Victoria!" She hears the panting voice of Wilkins call out to her from behind. He sounds like he was running.

Victoria stops in her hasty walk, feeling embarrassed once more for 'running off', away from town once more in the same day! _When will this day end?_ She thinks painfully. Quickly she turned to him, smiling at his soft features and kind face, seeming concerned.

"Well Miss, now, if I can assume. I express my condolences, my lady," Wilkins finally slows down, coming to a stop next to her. He gives her a half bow she was not expecting. The aura of charm he gives off in his fine suit not ignored.

"You assume right, Mr. Wilkins. I lost him so soon. Need not call me 'Mrs.' anymore. Thank you very much," she expresses appreciatively and hinting at goodbye, but now after a minute of silence between the two, she grows curious. His ardent words against the levy still alive in her mind with the rest of the men's.

But he had spoken up before she could, cutting her off unintentionally.

"Were you heading home? I was worried you were upset by what the Colonel had been saying to you."

She raises an eyebrow delicately. "Well, yes I was heading home. Nowhere else I'd be running to. But not because I am upset by the Colonel's words. In fact he has kept me good company and invited me to the assembly. I was not expecting many things—"

"—Neither was I, I agree—"

"—Like you being against the levy," she questions more as a statement. He tilts his head now subtly.

"I should have known you were with the other twenty eight," he comments quietly. "For once I considered women voting as well. Many of them could have weighted our end."

"I'm afraid that's not the world we live in, Mr. Wilkins. If it was, my husband probably could still be here."

"Vi—Miss Victoria, please forgive me. Also for my harsh words you may have overheard in there. It was not the greatest of days for the judge to allow everyone in, most of all you."

"Maybe for you, sir. For me it gave me peace in my husband's death. Now please excuse me, I seek my home for further peace, the only place I'll ever get it now," she bowed her head to him in farewell, and left him stuck where he was standing at a loss for words.

* * *

Benjamin Martin began to steer his horse towards the dimly lit house of Victoria's across the way. All of it seeming like a dream to him that their country has come to this, and those he held dear were being plucked from him like dandelions by the minute. Gabriel made sure he was plucked which made it harder.

He stops his thoroughbred horse, sighing deeply while weighing all his thoughts on how a visit would go with her. He hasn't visited her house since her uncle was killed before the town in a riot and her aunt taken hostage by the enemy days later. And he had no clue until today that she was ever married—six or seven days ago.

Groaning aloud with a hiss, caring not that he was uninvited to the wedding, but of the current voice in his mind tempting him to visit her because it is not only right but he does care for the woman and he wants to console her. She is going through the same as he did except she is a young woman at the age of nineteen unlike the likes of him. But it is the thoughts that follow of what could happen should consoling 'escalate', so to say. ' _It' could indeed happen_. But being the gentleman, he is, he would never force himself upon her inappropriately or do something she wouldn't want to do, but is that loneliness burning within them both now? And could that wall in between them be crumbled in one night?

"What would I say without being rude?" He found himself asking aloud, looking at her house still and steadying his impatient horse. "Who am I kidding, she needs time. I sure did."

There was also always an unspoken friendliness between them when they had grown to know each other after his wife passed. A smile always set on her face almost a mirror reflection of himself when he would show himself as the happy man he truly is. Seven kids can make one happy, and tired. But seeing her some days when he was in town, worn out from tending to his farm all day or carving the perfect chair, her distinct walk moving with her uniquely colored dress that no other woman had with the just as unique wavy honeyed locks, he'd feel rejuvenated. Meeting her piercing brown eyes was a windfall.

They are not strangers to their hidden feelings they have for one another. Whether it's because of his late wife he couldn't let himself give in to what he thinks could have been a second glorious marriage with Victoria in the past, or it was simply his own stubbornness and her own, he can't figure it out. There was and still is a wall up between them, and this may be because of the age mountain. She was keenly aware even then that he was twenty or so years older than her, and dejectedly, so was he aware. If he had shown any sign to her of forwarding their relationship to going places together, like a picnic or walk through town, she would unknowingly shoot his entire plan down before he could formally get his words out building up to asking her. It never deterred him from being a family friend, though.

Victoria's aunt (before she was taken hostage by the enemy and never found) had come to visit him countless times to check on him and visit his children, who had grown to think of Victoria's overly kind aunt as their grandmother. Yes, the woman was looking old enough to be one even then, but she wasn't all that innocent. He knew she thought himself to be a perfect match for her dear niece and was planning something. Every visit she paid never ended without telling him her niece asked how he is faring, and that she tells the children she said hello. He had grown to ask more interestedly- first to just see the older woman's reaction- and little did he know in the beginning, it was his heart and mind interested about Victoria. It was but a fright.

These thoughts now still frighten him as he recalls them layer by layer, and the voice of one of his daughter's follow.

 _"Father, she is sweet and good just like mother was. I met her! She can be strong just like her too, if you invite her here we can see. I just know it. We can have a mama, and you won't be alone."_

Benjamin then shuts his eyes gently and looks down at his lap. He has skipped to conclusion just like that, not being able to think of the full conversation he had with his daughter. The reins were gripped once more as he went to turn away, and ride off towards his plot of land.

"Who am I kidding…"

* * *

Her only two servants, Lucas and Harriet were waiting for her in the kitchen when she got home mid day.

"You're home earlier than we'd thought you'd be, Miss," Lucas takes his hat off towards her, finishing his supper and coming to a stand.

"We? No, she is grieving. She surprised me when she didn't turn around the moment she stepped outside the door!" Harriet exclaims, looking at the stableman with a wild look. If eyes could tell someone to hush, Harriet's eyes can do that and even take their tongue out of them without using her hands.

"It was a nice assembly. The colonel was kind enough to bring me. But South Carolina is officially in the war," she informs them gently as she registers their nervous faces. "And we—I will be in a pinch for money one day, I'm afraid. Eleven pounds was the levy."

"Your uncle has leftover money still in your possession," Harriet walks up to her and rubs the woman's shoulders before removing her sun hat. "It's not the end yet."

"I'll need to purchase… Or have you make me a black dress out of whatever dark materials you can find. Grays- any dull colors. I need to conserve what money I do have," she tells them both, grateful to have someone listening to her and trusts for these difficulties. "In the morning I'll be going to the reverend for guidance."

"I will have the coach and horses ready," Lucas tells her before hesitating to say something else, to which Victoria nods for him to continue. "And would you like me to find you an escort? You probably don't wish to be walking alone."

"She don't need no escort she got you!" Harriet hashes at the older dark man.

"I should be fine, Lucas. I'm used to walking alone and feeling alone, only this time I am alone for the first time in my life…" she breaks into cries, her eyes squeezing shut feeling hot tears stream down her face.

"You have us baby," Harriet soothes her with a hug. "You'll—"

"I'll what?" She didn't mean to shout in her ear when the woman stiffened, ashamed of what she was about to say so soon.

"You'll find happiness one day… again."

Victoria pulls away from the woman's hug, rubbing roughly at her burning eyes and steaming off to her bedroom and slamming the door shut behind her to grieve in the present time. The parchment that was littered on the floor now in neat stacks on her vanity and husbands desk haunted her at how unaffected they looked from the horrors of the world. They are just papers with words they had shared, letters to him from his family who she had never met—their wedding being quick and romantic—and songs she had started to write since they met. Now she has no intention on finishing them. Her songs to him ended this morning.

With a bubble of anger filling her heart, she pushes the letters and songs off her vanity with a weak pant. The papers falling to the ground back where she left them this morning. In eyeing her husband's desk, which was her uncles, she trembles in her walk towards her bed, perching on the end of it once more making no other sound in fear she'd disrupt the peace and quiet of her room and the papers on his desk. Where they should be.

She had no intentions on finding anyone anytime soon. Money troubles or not, she will not marry the second time for money or companionship. She is confident she will get by like she always had being her strong self. They can find her if they found her interesting and loved her, but she was not going to remarry one day for anything else if love was not shared on both her end and a man who looked at her like she was his life's mission and beacon of light.

Only, during the time of war, every man's life mission is securing America and her liberty. It could take years. She may not ever remarry should this be. Some part of her wasn't against this. If only money weren't a need and want.

 **A/N: The story is getting there! She'll be speaking to Benjamin next chapter. Thank you- The Caffeinated Hummingbird for reviewing and following! It made my day seeing your review! The Patriot is an old movie, and I regret not being able to seeing it then and coming up with this unexpected story sooner. But I will include this with my many other stories in the 'To Finish' list, even if there may not be many Patriot readers. This is thrilling to write, and it doesn't help that I have plenty of it typed already making me anxious. But I'm taking my time making sure its perfect lol.**

 **By the way, are you all aware who Skunk is? One of his lines were 'To hell with you! And to hell with the French!" I'm beginning to consider a little triangle between Jean, him, and Victoria one day.**

 **Please review and follow! More to come soon! :)**


	4. Chapter 3: Black and Blue

**A/N: Thank you Colonel Rose (Guest), Anonymous (Guest), and The Caffeinated Hummingbird for reviewing! I'm overjoyed you all love it and don't think I'm crazy for making a fanfic eventually focusing on more of the minor characters. I'm very happy you all noticed the detail in this. For this epic historical war film, and making a story based off of it by a different approach, every character and event counts, and everything said, described etc. will most likely be rementioned in the future chapters.**

 **I have replayed this movie countless times just watching what's going on in the background, a certain militia man in particular because he was very minor, and he surprisingly did some things no one could have noticed. Unbelievably, these actions he does ties perfectly with Victoria's future involvement with the militia. My plans keep changing every day.**

 **This is still prep for the future action to take place, so sit tight just this one last chapter. Please enjoy! :)**

 **()()()()()()()()()()()()()**

 **Chapter 3: Black and Blue**

 ** _A year earlier…_**

Victoria grinned like a mad woman when her family's high dollar horse drawn coach began bumping roughly along the uneven country roads of Charles Town, South Carolina. This was the first time she felt her most rebellious and _wild_. Her poufy French high-roll hairdo staying stiff unlike the rest of her small body draped with light pink silk brocade and ivory underskirts that rustle and grow wrinkly because of the rough movement.

"We are here!" The driver on the outside shouts behind him.

"Oh…" she took a peek at her aunt and uncles house through her glass and curtained window with curiosity. She was expecting them to live on a farm, not the very outskirts of Charles Town in a one-story mansion with a French countryside appeal. It looked tiny in comparison to most of the plantation homes they had passed with large white columns evenly spaced along the front porticos, and mature oak trees surrounding them or along the run.

Two people, man and wife scurried out their front door with eager smiles. The balding man wearing his white fringed hunting shirt and black breeches while his elegantly aging wife wore a royal blue bustled gown with white gloved hands folded in front of her.

"The siding got damaged!" The woman had hissed at her husband as soon as they approached the coach and she saw the mud, scratches, and dents in the sides.

"Wonderful," Victoria and the man said in unison. The man who must be her uncle opens the door for her having heard her comment from the opened window, before outright laughing with her.

"My dear, you are an outspoken one," he said in between chuckles, helping her down the retractable steps as she looked at them both with a wide smile.

"Yes, unfortunately," she said unsure. "My parents are not like that except when they are judging someone… my apologies, that was uncalled for to say—"

"—You said nothing but the truth. There's nothing wrong in that, sweetheart," her aunt smiled before engulfing her niece in a welcoming hug. "Soon they will be the ones judging us."

"How come?" She asks wide eyed, surprised her aforementioned attitude didn't faze them. They made it sound as if they didn't like them either..

"We are not supporters of the crown, darling," her aunt answered. Darling. This was the sweetest word to her ears she has ever heard. But what her aunt said before this sweet endearment was even _sweeter_.

"So… you don't have any hopes for changing me and my attitudes?" Victoria asks trying to sound despondent, but the relief in her voice could not be hidden. _They were not loyalists like her family! This was why they wanted her here. They knew she was being 'influenced' by Patriot society._

"None in the slightest," her uncle answered. "You will be around even more outspoken folks nowadays here. There's more Patriots then Loyalists. Even if we did try we would not be successful given how much we were told about your resilience and sneaking out…"

"Well," Victoria blushes, laughing briefly. "When I was younger I did. I've grown detached from society since then. Did they really tell you I'm resilient?"

"They tried sugarcoating you. We knew they were up to something. But we weren't going to turn down a long overdue visit from our only niece," her uncle said. _They did want to see her too. It was affection._

"You're not as wild as I thought you would be. Manners, good dress, and pleasing expressions…" her aunt looks her down assessing with not the shrewd eyes she was used to. "How can they be worried over you?"

"She was probably shoved in the _good_ dress, dear," her uncle barks out laughter thinking of his younger sister. Even the man she married would have a say in his daughter's very fashion. Her mother was an even worse perfectionist. It is no wonder they want their only child to be the greatest and to carry on their legacy.

"I do intend on remaining a lady in every manner," Victoria says honestly. "But when it comes to speaking what's on my mind… given the circumstance, I will not stay silent. I can't. As for being paired off with a young man not of my choosing or likes… like a redcoat…"

"Good grief," her uncle's eyes roll as he makes his way back to the house with a huff grumbling angrily about redcoats she thinks she hears.

"You won't be _paired off_ with any redcoat here. There hasn't been any here, truly. And you'll come to find he hates his sister and brother in law."

"The feelings are mutual," Victoria grins like she had been in the carriage, but now her eyes were filling with tears feeling an overwhelming relief wash over her. "Thank you…"

"Auntie, call me auntie, darling. Don't thank me just yet though. Come, let us show you what Charles Town life is like."

* * *

The murmurs and chatter of the townsfolk in the heart of Charles Town were trying to get under Victoria's skin. If it weren't for the lady manners she was taught—something good from her parents—she was ready to punch the next man she saw who looked her way in incredulity. Yes, a man! And yes, punch. Anger has been in her since yesterday waiting to be taken out on a person who confronted her in the wrong way.

"Ignore them, Miss," her servant, Harriet tells her. They just left the church speaking to the reverend. "We'll have that black fabric or dress soon enough."

"Why black!" Victoria hisses to herself, feeling the anger affect her words. "It is a depressing, lifeless color. I'm not dead nor am I old and bitter. I'm too young, Harriet. Can't I just wear the hints of black?"

"Miss, that's not appropriate according to this town's traditions, you know this. You're grieving and need a break from any man in your life. It is to keep men away."

"I don't want to keep men away. I can't believe I just said that... I meant I don't want to scare everyone off!"

"It won't be for long. No one will think twice once that year is up and they see you with a shining, vibrant gown," Harriet smiles at her proprietor. "You were only married for six days too."

"Need you remind me?"

"Remember what the reverend told you. You met him but a month ago, and married seven days ago. I'm not saying your love wasn't true, but it is better than having been married for years with more heartache. Both of your love was still growing."

"It was grown enough, if it wasn't I wouldn't have married him!" Victoria snapped back, catching her breath and controlling her tears.

The people's sorrows for her gone now. Yesterday was when she felt every one's pity for her in that General Assembly. Why they are not allowing her the time to grieve still is beyond her, or politely respecting her by grieving with her instead of gossiping. Gossip and rumor spreads like fire in this tightly knit town and surrounding areas. Someone always knew somebody, and everybody always knew everyone.

 _'She's too young!'_

 _'She should have never married him!'_

 _'The dress should have been black yesterday, and today.'_

 _'We can't wait to see what she'll do next. Who will she marry?'_

 _'Who will take her as their wife?'_

 _'Thank goodness no children came of it. Or… they were just married a week ago…'_

 _'Give it a month or two and we'll know!' 'No man will want her then..'_

It was the kind married parents walking in the streets with one or two of their sons missing, who greeted her kindly and offered their condolences that made her life easier. The yellow flag with a snake and the embroidered words 'Don't Tread On Me!' flaps in the wind above the courthouse and every large building with the perfect spot for this flag to be seen by all. One of the flags their country has come to be recognized for.

"Victoria!" Victoria stops in her walk and turns her face to the sound of his voice using only her first name, and their eyes immediately met. Her words caught in her throat for once assessing his enthusiastic face.

Benjamin Martin rode his horse up to the side of the woman walking along the sidewalk with her servant.

"Yes?"

Benjamin answers promptly, stopping his horse completely, "Where are you heading?"

"The seamstress. The weather is growing brisk soon and I will be needing a new dress made of thick cotton dyed a dull autumn color," she articulately says missing the look her servant gives her like she's mad.

He did not catch her implication, but he continued, "If you are not busy the rest of the day, I was wondering if you would want to join me on a walk in the governor's gardens."

"The governor's gardens?" She asks surprised, but was careful of not asking how he was given approval to. The governor's gardens a sight for sore eyes, and not open to the public unless it is on one day in spring whenever the town shall celebrate spring and rebirth of bright green grass and flowers alike. "How— Why—"

"—I know, I'm surprised as much as you are for earning an approval of sorts to be in the gardens. If not for me asking you as well. But I couldn't ignore a beautiful day like this and miss the chance of talking to you once more, when given the chance."

Victoria could not hide her blush, and Benjamin for the first time in a while felt himself grow red and warm at this rare sight. She had closed herself off and void of any emotion on her face, the opposite of how she used to be. A blush on her face was not expected as she was just informed of her husband's death yesterday.

Little did Benjamin know, one of his children was standing across the street, watching in disbelief.

"An approval of sorts?" She asks with a smirk. "Should I be worried?"

Benjamin looks up to the skies for a moment before looking back down at her with a 'reassuring' smile, "Nah... it's on my list of things I have earned validly."

"You're still full of surprises," she shakes her head with a giggle.

"Does that worry you?" He questioned in attempts to flirt.

"That depends. And if the idea of walking with a recently widowed woman doesn't worry you about your reputation?"

Benjamin silently berates himself for forgetting that major thing. He could have sworn he had thought everything through.

"I have no worry about my reputation, Miss Victoria, neither should you. The town knows everyone, and that we are nothing more than good friends, and you are unbelievably generous in kindness. You love the gardens, I just thought it'd be a change of view. Some light during your time of heal."

"Let's see how this walk in the beautiful gardens turns out. I look forward to it," she nods her head.

"Then… I shall meet you outside of the courthouse? If you will be here in town still and not home."

"Yes I will."

* * *

Thomas told Nathan the moment he got home crossing the porch what he had seen with his own eyes in the streets, but Nathan didn't believe him one bit, playing with his brother's new toy soldiers.

"Father wouldn't be that brave. Does he know what he's doing? Being with a girl?"

"Goodness Nathan, no I don't think he would. He was married after all once…" Thomas responds drolly.

"No, _with her_ , I mean. You know its awkward between them."

"Well yes, their age may be a gap, but not a big one—wait a second, he spoke of that to me privately…"

"Alright, I eavesdropped," Nathan admits with wide eyes. "I was curious!"

"You're fine, I won't rat you out. It's just…"

"She won't replace mother," Nathan mumbles, flinging a soldier across the table, imitating a cannon fire Thomas had showed him the other day. This action making Thomas smirk about how much influence he has over his younger siblings when Gabriel wasn't around.

"She won't. But no—no don't think like that yet. It's… I don't see today ending as good as he hoped. I don't want to see him down in spirits ever again. I'm trying to think positive for him."

"They seem perfect for each other, like doves," Nathan mumbles innocently then. His eyes looking angry at the 'enemy' toy soldiers on his calm face.

Thomas sighs, "Has Margaret been writing poetry again?"

"She speaks it and remembers it like verses. If only she can remember what I tell her."

* * *

"Oh, you're all awake," Benjamin inhales deeply looking at three out of seven of his children as soon as he entered his home; the three remaining oldest ones.

"Yes, the little ones are asleep," Thomas answers quietly.

"Is it true you went to walk with Victoria in the governor's gardens?" Margaret asks eagerly.

Benjamin chuckles at his daughter's bright eyes, excited for him, and doesn't want to see them fall. "I did little Miss. And she enjoyed every bit of them, as did I."

Thomas and Nathan fidget from their place by the entrance, watching their father's features closely for any sign of disappointment.

"Is she alright? Is she happy again?" she asks with eagerness and concern.

"Of course, she is. She's- she's strong as she's always been," Benjamin's hand goes to his face, and slides down to his chin, the words of his daughter from a year ago falling from his mouth just like that, regretting not being careful enough. Sure enough, she beamed hearing this.

Thomas looks down, biting the inside of his cheek, shaking his head discreetly, but his father caught it.

"It was a lovely walk in the gardens. That's all it was. We caught up after a while not talking, we needed to do just that."

His daughter looks away from him sadly, any hope she had dying.

 _"Tillie? That's a sweet shortened name of endearment," Benjamin smiles Victoria's way, both of his arms behind his back because before their arms were interlocked, in escort, but she wandered to all the rose bushes so much he had to let her arm go. "It's not Tori—which has another meaning nowadays."_

 _"It's alright to call me it, I suppose. Tillie. It feels empty without anyone calling me that since… you know."_

 _"I'm sorry I never got to meet him. He was travelling through you said? With his troop?"_

 _"Yes," she quickly nods her head feeling awful she hasn't spoken to him all that time. "It all just happened so quick, and fell into place. It felt like it was meant to be that day my aunt was gone. It still sounds awful to say and think, but without that happening, we would have never met."_

 _"How soon did you marry? Well, I mean when did you feel ready?" he asks her carefully, stumbling on his words at first, awaiting anxiously for her response._

 _"As soon as possible… maybe after a month of talking to him. He wasn't the kind to obey every order given to him. He acted on his own accord, strong heart if you will," she laughs when he tilts his head in recognition, a spark in his eyes at her explaining._

 _"You always were drawn to that sort. Is that why we were privileged to have met when we did a year ago? And became spirited friends?" He boldly asked which he froze up when he saw her face change instantly._

 _"I have, haven't I?" she seemed to say regretfully which had his heart beginning to crack, but what she continued with saying had his heart quickly pumping once more. "My parents number one thing they were against about me. Even now, fashioned into a well to do lady if I may say and think, they still haven't reached out to me. They don't care about me as much as they think they do."_

 _Her conversation skills have grown to be immaculate. She could have told him she was a queen and he would believe it. And this is the very woman that despised being a 'queenly one'._

 _"You are a well to do lady. You may say and think," he tells her honestly, hoping his voice doesn't sound too worried for her. "Frankly, yes, they don't care about you as they should. And that is a big mistake in many ways. But… have you given it much thought? To writing them and trying to visit them?"_

 _She scoffs, "What would they do? Not answer the door? I'm not that brave to face them, not yet, and I fear I never will be. And as for the decreasing money in my dress pocket, I will not run back to them for that. I'm not what they want for their only child to keep the stupid family line going—"_

 _Victoria gasps when his hand engulfs hers, warm and dry like the crops at this time of summer._

 _"As I said, Victoria. That is their big mistake. If I could, I'd handle them myself if it meant for you to have family once more. But… if they can't accept you, they wouldn't accept me as you do."_

 _"Benjamin? What are you saying?"_

 _"I need to tell you, Victoria… Tillie… whatever we are ignoring, or at least trying to, it's hurting. I apologize if it is something I may have done or said, and I can't recall it as good as I can your very presence in my life, even when I never see you. But…"_

 _"But?" She nervously lets the big but little word fall from her lips. Fearing she knows what he is thinking all too well. Her heart not racing, as it is still beating slow from finding out the death of her husband yesterday morning._

 _Benjamin head tilts gently to the side, looking at her as if she was the beautiful rose bushes she was gaping at moments ago. "But… for some time now, a while, I've grown to really, really, care for you. Now I can't stand the thought of you going through what I had for so long. And in your position, I don't want you to feel the same way and lose all happiness—_

 _"—Ben. I won't lose it all. I won't lose nothing. I haven't. I'm just not currently in the optimistic mood I'm always in. I need time, still."_

 _"I—Wait. What do you mean by that?"_

 _"You know, time to heal still. I'm hurting greatly and I fear I always will," she squeezes his hand tightly, her voice losing its gentleness which he never meant to cause her distress._

 _"I have my fears too, Tillie. But none of them compared to the fear of you…"_

 _"Of me what?"_

 _"Not being you, and being with me. Both is torture."_

After those words, which translated to 'I love you' in both of their minds, Victoria had diverted the entire conversation to something else entirely. She didn't want to fuss at her only man friend and scare him off with her worse attitudes and give him an answer she honestly wasn't so sure to give. Ben tried his absolute hardest to get their conversation back where it was, and understand her fright, but… it came to what it did. If he wanted to have hope still, which he can't help but to, she merely put him on hold for now. He just had to tell her, and give her some consolation that he would always be there for her.

"Just that. She is still healing, but goodness did she love the roses," Benjamin yawns tiredly then, nodding his head to his children that it is all well.

* * *

The first light of dawn cast darkly onto the floorboards of Victoria's room, to which she wakes up with a start seeing it's not her room. Not seeing any breakfast on a tray at the foot of her bed woke her up from her worried thoughts, remembering she was living in Benjamin Martin's home. His reassuring snoring can be heard down the hall.

It has been four months since their walk in the gardens, and after hardly a month later, the tax paying made her money go dry amongst other things. Even selling what horses they had within those weeks was worthless and she was in no position to sell any crop her uncle had remaining. Fall came quickly and the harvest was not good to them. The house couldn't be sold either. Not that anyone already didn't want it because of the price or no one needed a house, but she didn't want to give it up completely. Abandoning it is what it came to, however. The rest of the money went towards food, and the one thing she was avoiding paying full price for… a black dress.

Frustratingly, this elaborate black dress hangs in her hardly full closet only to be worn when she is in public. Now, living on the Martin's farm, she wears the simplest dress she had ever worn. The bodice and underskirt all black except for the white trim on the scooped neckline. She only wears a white lace cap when she is outside doing the laundry.

The sight was a nightmare not just for her to bare, but Benjamin too. Countless times he told her to not worry about tradition, seeing it disturbed her so much, and since she is not wealthy no more, she doesn't need to wear black like the aristocracy does. But after she told him how much times have changed, and this dress was surprisingly more affordable than how it sounded, every woman was able to purchase a mourning gown if they wished. And she wished. She was in bereavement over her husband of six days. She had to honor that, how could she not? She can't pretend and forget he was ever in her life!

Benjamin had still gathered some of his wife's dresses and had hung them up in her closet as a surprise of sorts. This took all the strength in him to give them to her. Not only she was not his wife, who was thirty-five years old at her death, but he saw how pained she was declining anything else he offered her because she felt she didn't deserve it, and she had nothing to repay him with. Yes, she was working alongside him for free.

She would not in her life let her be paid by a friend. It was not her money to take. Besides, she didn't need money. She had a roof other her head, a bed, clothes, food, and interaction with other people. It may not have been her own home with parents or an aunt and uncle with their hands on her shoulders raising her up still, but it was a warm, loving home that she can function in and be independent.

After having many more vivid dreams than normal she has been in the deepest of sleeps and always shooting up awake. The dreams she'll forget, but all she can remember was that they scared her. If she could try to remember one dream, it was her returning to her parent's house being pushed by rough, demonic hands to their doorstep, the grand door opens and that's where it would end. That one dream would make her envious of having no guardians by her side. No matter how much she can ignore it, it was the truth: a young woman's strength was being with family members who were able to keep her moving through life with different experiences every day. Not left to her own to fend for herself.

If she were in Philadelphia, she would have been courting another man already. If her aunt and uncle were still here, she'd be living with them in their home… continuing to be wealthy, and eventually be introduced to other men to court. It was the older person's presence which changed everything.

Being lonely… with no family benefactor… there is no bright end when the time her mourning comes to an end. She could not let this fire be put out. She had dreams like any woman, but she was always the one with the greater chance of greater things happening to her. The comfortable, high life is what she liked, everyone does. But to lose it so quickly? With hardly any hope of gaining it back?

If only the high life was perfect through and through, like it was here before her aunt and uncle died... and her husband...

Having Benjamin Martin, was a godsend. Victoria would think these negative thoughts every morning before remembering him, who had taken her in like family. He wouldn't let her life be ruined just when it began. She was forever grateful to him.

Her door flies open as it does every morning, and she yelps as she pulls the covers up her chest to hide her white nightgown.

The two youngest boys, Samuel and William, were in the doorway, in their pajamas with untidy hair.

"Victoria, we want you to take us outside," Samuel says without any pause looking as tired as he looks just waking up.

"It's not even morning yet," she tells them groggily but trying to wake herself up further. "You can't go by yourselves in the front yard?"

"Yes, but not in the corn field. Not until the workers are out there or you're there to watch us," Samuel folds his hands behind his back adorably, shaking his head.

"Why the field?" She questions, ignoring such a strange reason why they can't run in their own field. If anything, if the 'workers', the freed slaves, in the field should not be distracted by the children trampling through the crop they're harvesting. Well, not in the winter, now. They would just be maintaining it keeping it neat, and in other parts plant and nurture the winter crop.

"We capture mink!" William giggles out.

"And we kill them!" Samuel adds with a shout.

"That's not nice, boys. You don't need to be killing anything. Wait—You _can't_ kill a thing! Boys!"

"Then try and stop us!" Samuel takes off running down the hallway, and soon the stairs. She can hear the thumping on the steps.

"We're going to let the horse out too!" William smiles happily as he runs off after his brother, not hearing her exclaim.

"Change into your day clothes first! Don't make me get your father!" She shouted loud enough for them to hear and to show she is not pleased, but she didn't want to wake up the other members of the house.

Victoria throws her covers off her, shivering in the winter cold coming in through the glass of the window like a ghost. The cold air always had a way of seeping in. She stretches her legs across her bed while her hands go to her face with a loud yawn and exhausted sigh already. Not even four months living here, with exception to the reality, she finds herself in a greater depression as she works the plantation alongside everyone else.

The current reality frightening her and adding on to her fears of the future—A year's mark seemed so far away, her husband's death was already so far away, and Congress still hasn't compensated her. _6 months_ , Colonel Burwell did say. She has two more months to go before she can truly worry... and be an angry Patriot.

Even if she wanted to remarry again, regrettably, not for love this time, or… travel to her Loyalist parents in Philadelphia… she'd have nothing to give. She was out of all good luck.

 **A/N: This was depressing to type. Goodness. But don't worry, she'll have something to give. She'll realize this in time ;)** **I hope to have the next chapter up today too. But until then, thank you! :) Stay tuned!**


	5. Chapter 4: Surviving

**Chapter 4: Surviving**

 ** _A year later…_**

By the end of the summer, Charles Town was losing many more men to the call of war. Victoria and the Martin family all stayed together at their land unless errands to run had to be made. This was one of those days, and this time, Victoria was eager to set foot back in the city with a colorful dress on.

The color black was worn every day and not one day was skipped for exactly a year. The sense of accomplishment and strong love for her late husband was the greatest feeling in the world by the end. But on another note, her body had never felt so bland, so tired, and her skin so pale. Wearing such dark clothes for a while can change one's eyesight and mess with their emotions she believes. She was already depressed prior to wearing black, and depressed she had to wear it, but now there's a sadness she can't describe as she wears black no more and is accepting her husband had been gone for a year.

She watched the irises of her eyes adjust to her own self wearing the light purple gown she had already worn a year ago at the General Assembly. This time without the hints of black! But whenever this was said aloud, about her skin looking pale, Benjamin shook his head like she was mad. The morning sun was even spilling radiantly into her room, 'Gabriel's empty room.'

 _"_ How did Harriet ever put up with you? _"_ He had learned of her old servant's name eventually after her arrival.

"She managed. She cared for me just as my aunt and uncle did. I just wish I didn't have to lose her and Lucas too. The cost of freedom for everyone is high," she had said with a sad sigh, looking at herself in the mirror like she was an awful person. Her aunt and uncle's two slaves were turned over to one of the other town's residents after she had to abandon the house, and Benjamin didn't have room for more. He also didn't have the money to free them either because the price to free them was high.

And why she couldn't be paid money herself was because the slaves weren't in her possession to begin with.

"It is." He stepped into her room further, shutting the door behind him just a crack so they can talk in private. "But it doesn't mean it's impossible. And you got a tan on you from that sun. You look healthy compared to the other plain women of society."

She smirked as he appeared behind her, raising his arm up next to hers with a sly smile to compare their skin tone. It didn't help that his arms were quite hairy. "I suppose so. They're not all plain, and don't make fun of me, Benjamin Martin! I can't help that wearing dark clothes for a year makes a girl like me go crazy."

"A girl like you? No, a girl like you goes crazy over things _not in order_. Such as the flow of food getting to the kitchen on time. And it wasn't a bad color on you, really. You looked… older… wiser…" He laughed heartily when she swatted his arm with a smile that turned quickly into a frown.

"That's exactly what I was avoiding, looking old."

"But wiser? Tillie, you're the wisest young woman I've come to know. Wiser to not admit that you are wise."

Benjamin walked nearer, standing close behind her. His bodily heat felt beyond his white hunting shirt and pants. This makes Victoria stand completely still in shock, watching their reflections in the mirror. He was looking at her through the mirror as well.

"Thank you… I guess…" She trailed off biting her lower lip before rambling. "So what do you think of this dress? If I may ask your opinion. You can be honest and not care because that's every— I suppose it still fits. It was one of my favorites."

His hand reach to her hair over her shoulder, and pushed it back behind her ear delicately. The touching and slow movement making her throat tighten and heart race.

"It fits you very well," he tells her. "Of course I care."The weight of his words meaning more than how it sounds send her mind into a whirl. Her nose inhales a sharp breath when his left hand takes hers gently.

"Thank you, and I know you do. It was just about this… men don't care about these things as much as we do…" her right hand played with the skirt of her dress nervously. It was when his mouth was near her left ear, leaning over her shoulder, she began to panic.

But her loud exhale of breath was mistaken by Benjamin for something else.

"I know that you know that I love you, too," he says with a hushed, gravelly voice.

"Ben, I know. But I don't love you, I can't," she says turning her face more away from him so that his mouth was in her hair now.

"Why can't you? You mean that you do and you _can't_?"

"No!" she takes her hand out of his, feeling hurt herself that she is breaking his heart. "I don't love you in that way. I don't love you. And I also can't because… I could be your daughter. I'm a year older than Gabriel."

Benjamin steps away from her, nodding more than twice. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable."

"You didn't—"

"No, I did. I should have just known better since the gardens. Hell, since I first met you."

Finally, she asks him, never not being in the position to do so, "Why do you fancy me? Out of all the women here, some more your age… why me?"

He doesn't answer immediately, which causes her to believe he was ashamed. Before she could tell him to not be ashamed, he answered.

"I suppose my care for you was taken over by the idea of love. You… you're nothing like my wife, either. I'm not despairing when I'm around you like with my sister in law."

"That can't be all, Benjamin," she mumbles walking up to him and taking his hand back in hers. Her nerves gone completely now. "I wasn't blind to see that you did everything in your power to prove your love for me. And things like your wife's dresses, no matter how many times I said no, you gave them to my anyway, telling me to not feel bad."

"Well, you needed them," he commented with a deep voice.

"You're like me, Tillie," Benjamin says finally as he laughs lightly. "Like my wife you kept me in check, but then you weren't her. You're your own amazing, brilliant person. And when I saw you with my children… you fit the role as a mother so well next to racing horses with Thomas."

Victoria shakes with laughter along with him. She had been properly taught to ride a horse, and went along with Thomas wherever he hunted some days. Only a few days did Benjamin ever join them, probably to have been able to spend more time with her, and they'd go on different trails and roads to other nearby towns.

Benjamin continued more gently, then, "I _loved_ you, I did. Then, as I just said, my thoughts got mixed up. A strong, brilliant mother for my children is what I want, along with a partner to finish the rest of my life with because I can't be alone I admit. It's frightening. But that person isn't you anymore. I understand, and I got to accept that."

"Ben… I'm frightened too. But we pull through, we're stronger than what we think. It will be alright."

"I'll see you downstairs." He patted her shoulder, nodding his head in reassurance before heading out of her room.

Victoria could only stare after him impassively. The words that have been needed to be said, and no one knew them, were finally said. Now, her mind was clear at least, and from by he sounded he will accept it sooner or later.

* * *

 ** _Another year later- 1778…_**

The house was unusually quiet on this day. The children weren't as manic as they normally are which concerned Victoria. Despite the recent falling of Charles Town to the redcoats under Cornwallis, their lives in the outskirts of town in the country should be unaffected. So far, yes, they have been fortunately safe.

Since Benjamin was against the levy two years ago, and was remembered during this time by those who respected him and his family highly, he has been viewed as a crown supporter by the residents who remained in the town and didn't flee like the children's Aunt Charlotte. Those residents being the others who were against the levy, and those who gave up their hope for America out of fear or honest choice.

But it could not last, their little plot of peaceful land. It was only a matter of time before a redcoat shows up and sees what they truly are.

 _"Benjamin, are you sure we're safe remaining here?" She asked him the other night._

 _"Of course we are. Our lives have to be lived and not deprived of because of one flag being changed over another."_

 _She sighed, annoyed with his own defiance he had at the General Assembly two years ago already. "I know you don't agree with your own words. What if a redcoat shows up?"_

 _"We lie. I'll lie. I'm a persuasive farmer. They won't know."_

Victoria made her way slowly downstairs, holding Susan's hand. The youngest Martin looks up at her with baby blue eyes the entire way down clutching her doll Aunt Charlotte gave her, almost missing a step.

"Susan, you have to look straight. Silly girl," she laughs when the girl looks away from her shyly. "Why are you looking at me?"

Susan didn't make any sound or movement other than stepping down the stairs with her. The girl was three and still made no attempt or sign of talking.

"We're going to go outside this time and see what your siblings are up to," Victoria tells her once they make it down the stairs. "I'm doing no laundry today, hooray!" Susan's small mouth gave a little smile but resumed frowning instantly into her usual vacant expression.

"Good morning, Susan," Benjamin smiled down at his daughter as he walked past them, looking at her expectantly. Still, nothing. "Good morning, Victoria."

"Good morning, Benjamin," Victoria answers Ben with a smile, shaking Susan's arm lightly to make sure she is paying attention, which she always is. Little Susan is growing to be more of an observer of all things, but being mute they won't know until she tries saying something.

"We're getting there," Benjamin laughs lightly, winking at her friendly before he catches movement below seeing Susan run out the back door to play on the porch with her brothers and sister.

"Margaret has the best chance of getting her to speak," Victoria tells him what he already knows. "They still sit up at night after their prayers and she tells Susan about their mother."

The dark-haired man nods his head silently.

"Only a few times has she heard her say amen under her breath," he says.

"How is she with Aunt Charlotte? Like when you visited her years ago for the Assembly? I keep forgetting to ask you that."

His light blue eyes light up at the mention of his sister in law who had written them recently about her leaving her Charles Town Plantation and moving to her other one on the Santee.

"She said thank you to Charlotte when none of us were around. Still, so quietly. I fear she is afraid of something, like making me angry."

Victoria raises an eyebrow; her lips begin to form a question but she decides not to ask. "You have never done anything to make her afraid of you. Unless she overhears Thomas about him repeating that stupid Fort Wilderness story over and over again. Then again, she's not old enough to comprehend it."

"Right," Benjamin shakes his head at the mention of his remaining second oldest son who has been getting a mouth on him lately. "He shouldn't be talking about that in front of them. If he does that again send him to me wherever I am."

"Of course."

* * *

 ** _That night…_**

The young widow removed her apron moments ago with flour and other sticky mess all over it but is still finding some pieces of food on her light pink linen dress as she made her way to the stairs and up them. Her hair was thankfully pinned up neatly by Abigayle earlier in the morning, so this part of her remained unscathed from the food massacre.

Once her final steps reached the top of the stairs, she spotted Benjamin standing in the doorway to Thomas' room.

"Victoria," Benjamin acknowledges her with a smile in his eyes though his voice was shaky. Her attire was atrocious having just come from the kitchen preparing dinner with Abigayle. It was some amusement in his day, sometimes the only thing.

"I know that look. Don't worry, I'm changing," she giggles in the silence of the house upstairs. Everyone was down playing or prepping the table. Then, like in the morning, this house has been too quiet. Thomas' room he is standing outside of even quieter, and then she feels the tension. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Benjamin answered sounding disturbed once she reached his side. He turned back into the room to look at Thomas, who was holding a red coat in his hands and a tomahawk in the other. Or hatchet? Victoria couldn't tell the difference, but she was still aghast. "Put it back, please."

"Father? What happened at Fort Wilderness?"

Benjamin surprised her when he took her arm gently, beckoning her to leave with him.

"Put it away," he told Thomas once more, but this time in weaker tones as he dragged Victoria off down the hallway.

"Ben, what is it?" She asks him worriedly. "How did he get that? What did he say?"

He pulled her into his room, but unlike the time he had went into her room and shut the door, he left his open this time.

"He wants to fight the war, Tillie. So… so bad. And I couldn't say no!" He broke into tears before her leaving her stunned and heartbroken for him. Her hands went to his face, brushing his tears away roughly. "I told him when he's seventeen. He will be counting down the days…"

"No, no he won't. Please calm down, don't worry yet," she soothes him quietly. "You can say no if you wanted. You're his father."

"I already told Gabriel that. He left anyway. Am I a fool to have let him go? Am I a fool to not be stern enough and controlling…"

"I had controlling parents, Benjamin. Look where that got me," she makes him silent as she speaks slowly. His tears had ceased rolling down his cheeks as he clutched the candle holder tightly. "You are the most loving, caring, concerned parent… man, I've ever met. You are no fool. You are only being a father. They are getting older… and they have more choices open to them that you're allowing them to receive and consider. And they're young men who are finding their way in life like every other man. Just like you. They are their father's strong sons, raised to be strong through anything."

He licked his dry lips in uneasiness, looking like he wasn't hearing what she was saying.

She continued anyway, finally catching his teared eyes with her own, "You should feel honored your sons want to fight for the cause of liberty for all."

"Excuse me if I'm not so thrilled or flattered," he blows out his candle with a huff. "I'm beginning to lose my family."

"No you're not. Not if you think that way. Where did he get that coat… and tomahawk?" she asks again, this time highly curious. "Gabriel couldn't have sent that."

"No he didn't. It was mine."

Victoria's face paled. But she wasn't fearful, she was disgusted. "You kept that coat?!"

"It _was_ a fine coat, and look, if one of the King's men did show up I'll have that for evidence we are loyal."

"That's wonderful," she scoffs with a mirthless laugh as she left his room through the already opened door. "Just wonderful."

* * *

The following hour came quick and night fell. After the loudest conversation today happened in Benjamin's room, the house remained silent as it has been all day. It was beginning to put only Victoria on edge. Everyone else seemed peaceful.

This was until loud thunder echoed outside. Everyone's head snapped to the closed windows in suspicion, hearing for any rain.

"That ain't no thunderstorm, children," Abigayle tells them.

 _"It's them_ ," Nathan breathily uttered as he was cleaning the play cards off the floor.

"Stay inside," Benjamin pushes his hands back to Thomas, wanting them all to remain put. But Victoria found her awareness took over and followed the man out to look. It's not like the war was in their front yard or firing at their home. The cannons also had disturbed Victoria from getting the drinking glasses ready, feeling their rumble through the glasses in her hand, quickly wondering if it was an emergency.

Hearing creaking footsteps approach from behind, Benjamin casts his eyes down after glancing twice at Victoria seeing her in his wife's favorite white and red dress she changed into. It wasn't elaborate, or too plain, but it was the finest dress she could have ever worn to be his astounding wife by his side while running the plantation and raising children. The younger woman in it now, twenty-one years old, fit the dress like a glove. Victoria had matured beyond her years both in her mind and looks. She looked as if she never married. She quoted a year ago, 'I am only one year older than Gabriel.'

As for her mind, she could now read more fluently knowing more words that he had shown her how to pronounce and read. This was enough payment to be given she told him. Margaret and Victoria also wrote calligraphy together working on their penmanship.

For her looks, her skin had darkened to a toned tan similar to his being out in the sun even if it was fall and winter. The seasons were still warmer than the north, so cold winters weren't too difficult to bear. Her hands, he had held just earlier in the night, were rough and dry much like his. This aspect however was hardly ladylike for a woman to not have pristine hands. Given her true background coming from wealth, this was a slight off her character in the eyes of her parents she had told him. The social classes in some parts of Charles Town that still remain too, like the Simms, who are full-fledged Loyalists. Benjamin only wanted her to stay even more whenever the subject of her parents were brought up. He had never despised Philadelphia more in his life.

"They sound like they're close," Victoria says searching for any physical sign of war, but it was only distant sound. "Are we safe?"

"They won't harm us," he calmly says, turning away from her, noticing that his children had come out too. All but Thomas. The youngest son William goes to his father's side and is pulled close.

"Six-pounders. Lots of them," Benjamin had answered his children's question before one of them could ask.

"How far away?" Samuel asks hanging onto the paling of the porch.

"They're a long way off."

Victoria inhaled quietly sensing his worry. His eyes shone with cautiousness every time a cannon fired past the trees, or in the trees it sounded like. The thick, mature trees all around was this house's only pillow of protection from any invaders. There have not been any to come into the far outskirts of Charles Town, nevertheless in the trees. Town residents only know where everyone is.

"They're most likely heading the other direction."

If the current children on the porch didn't make her feel troubled enough, with their perplexed and unsure looks on their innocent faces, Victoria feels a wave of nerves wash over when she hears guns being handled behind her. She shakes her head, putting her hands-on Margaret and Susan's shoulders to move them out of Thomas' way, who was shoving a musket to Nathan, and another held incredibly close to her side which made her break into a cold sweat.

Never in her life has she been this close to a gun.

"Put those in the house," Benjamin reprimands. He noticed Victoria's discomfort the instant she went to his daughter's sides and holding them close.

"They might come this way," Thomas complains. His hat was even on his head.

" _They won't harm us_ , Thomas," Victoria repeats what his father just told her. Thomas looks her way as she adds lastly, "Not right now."

"Must I tell you again?" Benjamin stresses. This time, Thomas took the musket away from Nathan who let it go quickly not wanting to be fussed at as well.

Their father immediately turned upbeat, and rubbed William on the head fondly, "Let's all stay close to the house tonight, all right? And Tillie, please ensure dinner is brought to my study tonight. I wish to idle in there."

"Of course," she nodded her head before heading back into the house to let Abigayle know and she could bring it to him.

* * *

The children had inhaled their cornbread the instant they sat down after praying before meal. The main course was the kill of the day, duck and goose. Everyone was at the table, other than Abigayle who was still serving Susan and herself, Benjamin was in his study, and Nathan had went to bring Thomas his plate of food in his room.

Upon returning, the third oldest boy looked grim in the face. This was a sign he was going to either tell a story from hunting today, or all together misbehaving.

"Did Thomas get his dinner?" Abigayle asked the boy plopping into his usual seat.

"Yes Abigayle."

"What was he doing?" Victoria inquired with a lower tone while she took a sip from her water before continuing to collide her fork to the glass plate, cutting up the well-cooked bird.

"He was painting his toy soldiers. Making more of them blue," Nathan was definitely not as bored saying it from how he appeared. He looked fidgety as he began to poke at his goose meat.

"We'll have to fight them off," Nathan then clenched his fork and spoke with the most menacing growl a young eight year old can emit. _Ah, so Thomas had said something to him_ , Victoria thinks.

"Won't father do that?" Samuel asks.

"They'll probably kill us men…" Nathan's eyes shifted slowly to the only women in the house with an unnerving smile. "…and do Lord-knows-what to you women."

The women and girls at the table turn their heads to him in shock. Victoria recovers after choking on her water.

"Nathan…" Abigayle stares at the boy annoyedly, shaking her head in dismay. Nathan was always the one maturing in speech far beyond his years. Samuel was catching up to him.

"Nathan, do not say such things and think unbecoming thoughts," she gapes at the boy. "I'm disappointed in you."

"Well its true. They treat the women different."

"And how do you know that?" Abigayle asks him quite worried, more than how she normally looks. She and Victoria share the same concerned look.

"Because they're women, and weaker than men. They can be pushed down."

"Is that all?" Victoria asks with an unamused smile at the boy's thoughts.

"Yes…"

"Good. There should be nothing else. Now eat your supper and only have proper dinner talk," she tells him lastly as she resumes eating her own food Abigayle and she spent hours preparing. They all missed the look Nathan sent to Samuel, who smirked in agreement that he was right.

Of course like any moment of peace they have in this house, save for the quiet morning if it weren't for the younger boys letting the horse at again to chase, their dinner was disturbed by the sound of someone's feet stopping abruptly, and the click of a pistol.

All of their heads turned to the sound and gasped at who was standing weakly in the doorway.

"Slowly turn," Benjamin's brooding voice ordered.

"Father-" Gabriel's pained voice filled the lower downstairs, and everyone jumped from their seats. Now they knew for sure it was him and not some other bloodied man. Gabriel was not wearing the same clothes he had left in two years ago. He had grown, yes, but he was never one to outgrow clothes and to part with them easily.

"Abigale! Victoria! Water and bandages, fast!" Benjamin shouts grabbing his oldest son and carrying him over to his study and lay him on the raised settee.

"The battle. Were you there?" Thomas raced into the room panicked as well, but the eagerness in his eyes to know what was going on out there was more prominent.

"Have you seen any Redcoats?" Gabriel asked his father in a gasp, ignoring his eager brother completely.

"No, not yet," Benjamin answered. Victoria and Abigayle re-entered the room with everything asked for. "Abigale, the children, please."

"Children, come. Upstairs," she left the room momentarily to lead them to the stairs and ensure they went to their rooms. Victoria meanwhile began, and watched Benjamin rip apart Gabriel's shirt to reveal his nasty slash in the side, rather deep.

Grimacing she got the herb remedy, Abigayle returned to pour the water into the bowl Benjamin began to soak the rag in and clean the blood off his son's stomach. No one paid mind to Thomas who slinked back and watched from the stairs.

"Gates marched us straight at the Redcoats," Gabriel spoke in shuddering breaths, but his voice was clear enough to understand. "Our lines broke. The British Green Dragoons cut us to bits. I was given these dispatches. As I left, I saw the Virginia Regulars surrender. The Dragoons rode into them. I killed them all. Over 200 men."

His father nodded bleakly but approvingly at his son's accomplishments.

It was when Gabriel went to sit up, his arms wobbling behind him as his head spins, his father broke. "I have to get these dispatches to Hillsborough."

"You can't ride," his father stops him, putting a hand over his son's chest to lay him back down.

"I can't stay here! It's not safe for-" the booming of a cannon outside their house this time made them all jump. Gabriel fell back into the pillows listening to the crying out of men and orders being given.

"They're right outside, oh my lord," Victoria swallows. Benjamin's hand on her shoulder comforted her barely as he grabbed his pistol and left the room to go to the front porch.

"What are you doing here?" Gabriel asks her confused as he laid back down tiredly, not able to put up a fight anymore.

"I've been living here since you left," she rubbed the herb into his wound and left Abigayle with him for some time because she caught the children sneaking back downstairs and going to the parlor, where they were looking at the open window.

"The window should be clo—" Victoria stopped in her words and tracks. There were men in both blue and red coats with arms, firing at one another. It couldn't be seen who was winning, but that didn't seem to matter, she thinks. Both sides are in it for blood, but she couldn't help but tell that their fellow Patriots were being pushed back and slain before their eyes.

Quickly coming up behind the girls and two boys, her arms around them, they watched with eye gaping horror and awe at the gunpowder exploding into the air from both guns and cannons. Blue and white haze, sparks of yellow and orange, and the fabric of their uniforms even seen being blown into the night air like ashes from a fire that wasn't there.

But it was too dark to see that it was actually blood.

 _"Fire! Fire!"_

"Children! In your rooms, now!" Benjamin's voice yelled into the room scaring them all. "Victoria, I need you and Abigayle to finish up Gabriel, then come outside to tend to soldiers. We have a couple of them on the porch now."

"Which side are they on?" Nathan deliberately asked.

"It don't matter. Say your prayers and go to bed, now," Benjamin told him once more.

Victoria didn't have to usher them to the stairs, they were all wise enough to not disobey their father. So she quickly followed Benjamin out, but instead of going outside she went to finish with Gabriel. Abigayle was just getting the stitching needle ready.

"I'll take it from here, Abigayle. Find the other threads we have and spare rags, tear some if you have to. I'll meet you outside soon," she told the head wrapped servant.

"Alright, thank you," she responded as she hurried out.

"Miss Victoria, I need to get these dispatches to the receiver's hands promptly. Please stich me up and let me go," Gabriel begged her with a pained face which showed he looked worse off than how he arrived here.

"Were you given the lemon balm?" She asked him eyeing the distilled remedy.

"Yes. I've seen enough of that, indeed," he tried making light of the scene but he frowned. She brushed his dirty-blonde hair back out of habit to check for any fever. or lumps. "Please, Miss—"

"No, you need to stay and sleep. You looked like you were ready to die when we first saw you. There's bags under your eyes too," she points out as she began sewing through his skin, shuddering whenever he shuddered at her cold touch. At this, she moved the candlelight closer to her so she could see better and warm up her hands. "And no need to call me Miss. I am but a year older than you."

He smirked, "Right. But before I go to sleep… did you marry my father?"

She looks at him plainly, biting her lip, "No."

"Then why are you living here? Did something happen?"

"I lost my home," she simply answered. _I lost it all._ "Look, if you rest properly tonight, I just may help you sneak out in the morning to a horse and get out of here before anyone can stop you. Those dispatches sound important and secret."

"Thank you, Victoria," he groaned. His eye were fluttering shut prior to him asking about her marrying his father. "They are…"

* * *

The next morning was not happening as planned for not just Gabriel and Victoria, but the rest of the family as well. The few wounded that had came during the night increased by midnight and into the early hours of dawn. Many of them, on either side, refused care because they needed sleep. So they collapsed onto the earth and hardly moved.

Benjamin, Abigayle, Victoria, and other farm workers (the freed slaves) were woken up and taken to the Martin's front lawn for extra helping, healing hands.

Victoria was strewn across the floor inside the house, on the rug near the front door, sound asleep. Rags, bottles of herbs, and needles were sticking out of her stained dress pockets so sloppily, she could have been murdered and no one would dare to know.

A hand shaking her shoulder awake, she heard the man's panting and yawns as she came to, and looked up at Gabriel hovering above her, standing up carefully from kneeling.

"We're going to need you soon again. I'm so sorry," he told her with a broken sigh as he made his way out the front door.

She shook her head, pulling herself up with a sore groan herself. The floor was not as plush as it felt last night… or early this morning, more like. The eyes and wounds of the soldiers haunted her silent dreams. Her hands were everywhere touching them and even going as far as having to view some of the men's lower regions to bandage their lower stomach and upper-inner legs. Bullets were not accurate on either side. Five men had the wounds that were shot into their bodies by a perfect marksman. One man did get shot where no one should ever be shot.

She violently shudders as she stands thinking of that horrid sight, ending up not being able to care for it. One of the freedmen took over that man, and since that last patient, the rest of the time spent healing was a blur.

Walking out onto the front porch with a numb leg from sleeping awfully, Victoria slowly wobbled to the first man she saw sitting on the porch, against the railing like the others are, with a gash in the side of his head.

"You're too kind, Miss," the man told the woman kneeling down in front of him, breaking out into a cough out of nerves and pain. He hadn't talked the entire time.

"Hush now, it'll be fine. You're most welcome. The bullet was removed it looks like," she said in calm tones. Not talking him through what she's going to do, she took the wet rag one of the freed slaves gave her walking past, and began cleaning his bloodied head.

"It was never supposed to come here, Miss," the wounded man in front of her which she soon noticed was a redcoat. She had to use every ounce of strength in her to not pause in her work.

"But it was," she shakes her head, glancing to his fellow red wearing companion beside him, but next to that man is a blue coat with red trim, hissing in gut-wrenching pain at one of the farmhands tending to his ruptured leg. His knee was overly bandaged and soaked with blood. _Everyone needs help_ , she keeps reminding herself.

But there were men who were able to function enough to clean their own wounds albeit feebly and not so well and hygienically. One of the redcoats kept dampening his red cloth that looked like it was dyed that color into the same water and cleaning himself with grunts.

"I beg your pardon?" He asks her quietly. If his face weren't disoriented as it was, he would have probably looked at her madly.

"Since the beginning this war was not to be just fought on the frontier, or some distant battlefield, but amongst us. Among our homes. Our children will learn of it with their own eyes, and the innocent will die with the rest of us…" Victoria trailed off, briefly catching Benjamin's eyes looking in her direction.

If anything, she had learned since last night, war for any cause was brutal and did not be kind to either side whether its physical wounds, or mentality. Most of the younger men from last night were still laying off to the side on the lawn, either tending to themselves as well, being tended too, or sitting there waiting for help.

Fortunately, there was no great tension on this cloudless day until horses began to neigh more erratically, and a flood of British soldiers came trudging through the green and golden farmland and approaching the Martin home with bayonets displayed in front of them.

She heard Benjamin walk closer to her, his footsteps near her kneeling self, and the old familiar click of boots coming up the wooden steps startled her. She looked up to meet the face of a British officer, one of them just arriving with the flood of redcoats that are part of the original army or replacing those fallen.

"Thank you for the care of His Majesty's soldiers," the officer solemnly spoke with his rich inflection. Victoria controlled herself from rolling her eyes in front of the sitting redcoat men before her, but not a moment later, she felt helpless.

The pounding of hooves against the ground made her stand up, and step backwards as she looks far off at the speedily approaching horsemen wearing different black cockades. Theirs have huge black feathers in the front and along the top, tall like a cavalry helmet, while the current officer next to Benjamin has the traditional black cockade resembling a tricorn. The gold trim and ribbon on the side must symbolize his station.

 _"Oh, it's him,"_ one of the men on the floor muttered.

" _Not again."_

The man leading the horsemen with a menacing scowl but assessing gaze rose his hand up high in signal for his men to stop once they entered the front lawn.

They were riding so quickly they could have rammed through every person and crashed through the house without any second thought. Then again their faces looked like they wouldn't mind to.

The officer left Benjamin's side, to which I stood in his place and stood near him. His hand went to rub my lower back firmly.

"Lieutenant, have a detachment take our wounded to our surgeons at Winnsboro," the leading horseman ordered in a ostentatious mutter.

"Yes, sir," the officer, the Lieutenant, they all now know nodded his head in obeisance.

Benjamin nodded his head briefly, approving so far of what is being done. The King's men were taking away their men for proper care and off his land.

"Fire the house and barns," the horseman then ordered. Everyone's heart increased in palpitation as they stiffened. "Let it be known that if you harbored the enemy you will lose your home."

Victoria exchanged a glance with Gabriel, shocked at the blatancy of the man's words. Her grip on the children's hands and shoulders tightened while she got a look from Benjamin warning her to hold her silence as he is too, for now. The men on foot had already taken up orders to ready torches burning bright orange while the horseman had turned his attentions to his freed slaves, walking up to his horse in attempts to clear any trouble.

"By standing order of His Majesty, all slaves of the American Colonies who fight for the Crown, will be granted their freedom, with our victory." The horseman continued, looking satisfied towards the group of hired hands who worked in their fields.

"Sir.." Josiah replied, removing his hat and twisting it in his hands anxiously as he exchanged glances with the others. "We're not slaves. We work this land, but we're freedmen."

"Well, then you're _freedmen_ who will have the opportunity and the _privilege_ of fighting in the King's Army, _aren't_ you." He snapped, as a soldier came hurrying down the steps of the porch past them, Gabriel's bag clutched tight in his hands. Victoria's lips curled inwards, she had hidden that parcel! Unless Gabriel had taken it out thinking he could—oh goodness, she forgot about helping him escape!

"Rebel dispatches, sir." He handed the satchel up to the man on horseback, as the family watched on in horror. The man flipped through the contents.

"Who carried this?" He questioned absently, glancing up at the Lieutenant, who fumbled, shrugging.

 _"Who carried this?"_ He demanded again, and Victoria looked up as Gabriel reached for his uniform coat and pulled it over his shoulders, wincing.

"I did, sir."

Victoria snatched vainly for his hand, anything to stop him, but he brushed her off, sending her another look.

"I was wounded, these people gave me care. They have nothing to do with the dispatches." He said loudly, making his way to the front of the little group on the stairs.

The man watched him with pensive eyes for a moment, then glanced to the Lieutenant, handing him the satchel.

"Take this one to Camden, he is a spy. Hang him, put his body on display."

"He's- he's a dispatch rider, and that's a marked case!" Benjamin finally spoke up, stalking forward as two soldiers took Gabriel.

"Destroy the livestock, save the horses for the Dragoons." The man continued, ignoring him.

"Colonel, this is a uniformed dispatch rider, carrying a marked case. He cannot be held as a spy."

The Colonel stared at him for a moment, an unsettling smile curling his lips. _So a Colonel he is... That is why he is so haughty._

"Well we're not _going_ to hold him. We're going to hang him."

Thomas started forward at his words, but Victoria snatched his wrist and dragged him back against her side, sending him a warning glare.

"Colonel..."

"Father." Gabriel hissed, and Benjamin paused.

A look of understanding passed into the Colonel's eyes.

"Oh, I see. He's your son. Well, perhaps you should have taught him something of loyalty."

"Colonel, I beg you, to please reconsider. By the rules of war—"

"The rules of war. Would you like a _lesson_ , sir, in the rules of _war_?" He cocked his pistol, brandishing it in Benjamin's face who stared the barrel of it down leading to the man's eerily blue eyes, before a sly look crossed his own.

"Or perhaps your children would?"

The barrel shifted so it was pointed at the group on the stairs. Victoria moved instantly, shoving Margaret, Susan, Samuel, and William behind her as Abigayle did the same with terror and sobbed expressions on their faces, shielding the younger children with their bodies. Victoria had to pull Nathan back but he was being difficult staying rooted to his spot.

The Colonel's gaze swept over Abigayle, their beloved servant, before turning to Victoria. He took his time looking her over, gaze sweeping slowly over her wispy frame caked in blood on her white and already red dress…taking it in… tasking the sight to memory. Her face did not resemble any of the children's so she must not be this man's wife, he thinks.

The smallest of dangerous smiles quirked his lips as his gaze turned back to Benjamin, who had moved in front of them protectively, arms spread as if to guard them behind him.

"No lesson is necessary!"

He arched an eyebrow, but lowered his pistol, and the Lieutenant chose that moment to speak up.

"Sir, what of the rebel wounded?"

The Colonel glanced his way, seeming to take a moment to process his question, his gaze flickering over the wounded soldiers.

"Kill them."

Everyone was silent for a moment as his words sunk in; even the Lieutenant looked momentarily horrified. The soldiers used the distraction to drag Gabriel forward, binding his hands with ropes. Thomas fidgeted at her side.

Victoria whispered prayers to above for help, and to not let this unnecessary killing happen before their eyes, or burning the house down. The torches were lit several minutes into this dragoon's arrival and already was the fabric wrapped around the sticks beginning to smoke heavily into the air.

"Father, do something!" Thomas hissed loudly making her and his father's head impulsively turn to him.

"Be _quiet_ _."_ Benjamin snapped, and Thomas snapped his mouth shut, but a look of furious determination came over his pale face. He looked at all of them, telling them to stay calm and remain still.

But Victoria's sight snapped back to Thomas, who was looking finicky and shuffling his feet. She gasped and snatched futilely at Thomas as he steeled himself and ran forwards, ramming his shoulder into one of the Redcoats in front of Gabriel, sending the soldier sprawling out onto the dirt.

"No! Thomas!" She left the steps pushing past Samuel and Susan and went after him.

 _"Gabriel, run_ _!"_ _Thomas yelled_.

Their father yelled a warning, but it was too late. The Colonel levelled his pistol and fired a shot, hitting Thomas in the back. His arms flailed out and his legs straightened as he fell.

Victoria's scream was mixed with Benjamin's, and they both sprinted forwards. Benjamin caught Thomas as he tumbled to the ground, cradling him in his lap, as Victoria sank to her knees beside him, pressing the cloth of her stained skirt to the bloody exit wound in his chest.

 _"Stupid boy…"_

The soldiers dragged a screaming Gabriel off, and Victoria slowly rose, staring in shock at the Colonel who was already staring at her emotionless.

"How could you?" She whispered, heartbroken.

"Oh, easily, my dear." He sneered.

Her eyes blazed, and she stepped forwards. "How could you! You monster! What's _wrong_ with you?! He's only _fifteen_ _,_ for god's sake, just a boy! _Who are you to do that_?!"

He seemed amused at her outburst. "Never knew a woman to have as much gall as that, especially towards an officer. Tell me, would you like the same fate as that boy?"

He motioned to Thomas.

"He did nothing wrong… _We_ did nothing wrong," Victoria muttered angrily upset, choking on a sob she is holding back for her sake and Thomas'. She wants this man to hear every word she says. She reaches back to hit the man on his horse, but froze, the telltale click of metal sounding as she was suddenly staring down the barrel of his pistol.

"Ah ah ah, I wouldn't do that if I were you, and I wouldn't want to shoot through your pretty face. And in answer to your question, there is nothing _wrong_ with me. I simply give people what they deserve. As for him, yes, he was wrong for attacking my officers. I saved him from hanging and slow but sure death! And as for you all, once again, you were wrong to house _the enemy_. So tell me." He leaned closer, so that only she could hear him.

 _"What do you deserve, my dear?"_

She stood her ground, glaring daggers. If he was such a man, let him have the courage to say something else. He wouldn't do anything to her. Unfortunately, he seemed to hear her thoughts. His eyes shone with horrid gratification underneath his tall, black dragoon helmet. His dark chin strap only darkened his sneer.

"Ah. You don't think I could hurt you, do you? Well, if you'll look over there-" he motioned again to Thomas, "-you'll find what I'm capable of, even towards children. Now, do you really want the same fate? I know I wouldn't."

He paused. His gaze assessed her angered face and pouting lip. She was holding in the tears overfilling in her large eyes, her chest heaving fitfully.

"Still, you ought to be taught a bit about respect and manners, girl."

His hand moved slightly, the barrel of the pistol shifting a few inches, and fired.

Victoria screamed and fell to her knees as a blinding pain shot through her. She grasped her arm, her own blood staining her dress's white sleeve scarlet. She wasn't sure if the bullet had gone into her arm or just grazed it, but either way, she was in so much pain she was seeing black spots splattered across her vision.

Benjamin couldn't bring himself to yell it happened so quick. He laid Thomas down, who had died in his arms instantly though it felt like hours passed, and raced to her side and had tried to pull her hand away to check the damage to her arm. But he was stopped by the barrel of a pistol at his throat. A few soldiers dragged him back, and as Victoria gasped in pain, trying to control her breathing, she shrieked as hands clamped around her, dragging her onto the horse of the Colonel.

"No!" Benjamin yells with a deafening voice. "Enough!"

She vaguely heard Benjamin yelling in her pain in her arm and the smell of smoke in the air. An arm wrapped around her tightly did no better with her panicking along with a leather-gloved hand clamped over her mouth, and suddenly she was moving forward on a horse.

 _"Victoria_!" The children yelled after her in tear-jerking cries.

"Victoria…" The Colonel sounded as if he were smirking as they were riding off.

Victoria managed to look up and behind her, focusing hard on the house she lived in for two years, which was now in flames and thick clouds of black smoke, Benjamin standing with the remaining younger children, and Thomas laying on the ground under the trees. Little Thomas, only fifteen years old, and a victim of needless war brutality… Like her uncle was… Now she is being taken hostage exactly like her aunt! The words of Nathan crossed her mind, _Lord knows what they'd do to the women._

 _Thomas… He was only fifteen… Dead… She could've stopped him! She could've slapped this man…_

The brutality of the man currently holding her against him tightly, his strangely hot chest right behind her back feeling his every breath. She struggled a bit, managing to pull his hand away from her mouth to which he sighed briefly.

"Who _are_ you?" She wheezed. The smell of a serious fire burning still not escaping anyone's senses.

He glanced down at her, silent for a moment, as if trying to determine whether or not he could be bothered to answer.

"Colonel William Tavington. Who are you?"

"Victoria Gossett, Colonel," she tried not to spit his title. Feigning politeness to this horrid man made her angrier. It was her life at stake, and she'd rather not lose it quicker than she thinks she will.

"I'm sorry, _Gossett_ , did you say?" His manner changed like day and night. Worry even was slipping through. "Tell me I heard right."

"Of course you heard correctly."

"I believe I owe you an apology, but not until after I ensure you have learned your lesson. I just may let you by, _Jewel of Philadelphia_ , should you not try anything during this ride."

"I would never disrupt a horseman holding the reins, a well-practiced one too. And I was sort of shot, losing enough blood to faint."

"Heavens!" The Colonel said surprising her by whipping out his handkerchief from his saddle bag and throwing it in her lap to take care of her own. When she glanced down her stomach lurched to vomit at the sight and _smell_ of Thomas' blood, other soldier's, and her own. "You backtalked me! What are you woman?"

"A Philadelphia lady, loyal to the crown, sir," she coughs to clear her throat and head, then continuing with the uppity tone she is known for when she gets an attitude. "If you don't take my word for it then I will surely write to my parents disrupting them from their worrying already—"

"—No, no, please do not. But what were you doing living with _them_? Neutral folk. That's a crime in itself. Distant family of yours?" His tone turned menacing towards the end. If she wasn't feeling so awful, she would have felt that his arms around her torso tightened.

"Yes. His wife, my sister, had passed on for some time. She was never supposed to have left Philadelphia. But, she met him, and we never saw her again. Finally after many years I could leave my sheltering parents to be sent down here to visit my beloved nieces and nephews." She lied.

He looked at her face only commenting, "You truly know how to make a man feel awful, Miss Gossett."

"I don't try to, unlike you."

"I've heard enough!" he stopped his horse with the pompous face she knows all too well with his British accent. "Take Miss Gossett to Camden with the spy. Let her witness her _other_ beloved nephew's death, then have her brought back to me at once. She will be great company with Cornwallis."

He paused just before he finished, even taking her right hand on the same arm he shot, and kissed her hand too generous for her taste. His baby blue eyes glinting with pleasure. She never thought she'd strongly dislike a man with blue eyes.

"And I look forward to speaking to you further, _Miss Gossett_. And bandage her arm!" he ordered lastly before she was pulled down from his horse, hissing and crying out in pain that she was grabbed where she was shot. "I was almost sorry for a _moment_."

She wanted to comment badly that he was not being the proper _British_ gentleman to a Philadelphia lady, but keeping her tongue silent, she knew her best hope of staying alive was being with Gabriel.

The man knew it too, that he was wrong to have sent her to watch her 'nephew' be killed. He made to speak again but no words came out, only loud exhales of breath as he watched her be dragged from his hold and to another officer.

His father wouldn't let them take Gabriel away… Or her. At least with this Colonel not around, she'll have a greater chance of being rescued.

 **A/N: Longgggg chapter. But... Tavington! The infamous, cruel, heart-pounding, insensitive Butcher had made his appearance. He shot Thomas, shot Victoria... he _will_ shoot more. The next chapter is going to be my favorite, at least until Skunk comes into the scene with Jean Villeneuve- then the other plot comes into play ;) Victoria's life has been taking a turn downhill in the past two years. Any whom, I hope you all enjoyed this extra long chapter! The next one will be posted soon, most likely by the weekend. **

**And thank you lokindclonelvr for following! :)**

 **Please review and stay tuned!**


	6. Chapter 5: Rescue and Revenge

**Chapter 5: Rescue and Revenge**

It was a smooth ride heading the other direction from Colonel Tavington's dragoons. Atop the horse, Victoria sits in front of one of the Colonel's men who did not speak to her the entire ride. He didn't even offer his name. It wasn't a long ride either, thankfully, as they were travelling quickly to catch up with Gabriel being led by the redcoats on foot.

Her mind relaxed when she was being taken further and further away from the horrid Colonel and not at all worrying about watching Gabriel to be hung in time. _That would not happen._ Even if they weren't rescued, someone high up in the British command will see him not eligible to be hung. Truly he was being taken care of along with the other wounded Continentals and Redcoats. It was a ceasefire. A peace.

But that _Colonel William Tavington_ , she spits his name in her mind, feeling her mind's spit cloud her own eyes or it was just seeing spots in general from being grazed by a bullet and losing blood. She was still losing blood even with the bandage wrapped around her arm tightly and her hand above it to help relieve any pain. Now she knows how miserable those suffering men felt. It was one of the most awful feelings in the world. She didn't want to imagine how it'd feel if the Colonel aimed at her leg instead.

 _The Martin's home, her home as well, being leveled by fire, and the poor, defenseless Patriot soldiers being killed pitilessly._ These thoughts race through her mind as her head lays back, and shifts with the movement of the horse, against the redcoat's chest who could care less how she's faring.

At some point during the ride, she saw darkness, having fallen asleep for a short instance then waking up and she was seeing a line of redcoats up ahead, travelling along the forest's road. Her well arm reached to her nose, and she wiped her dry but dripping nose from all the crying she had done.

"Halt!" The Lieutenant ordered clearly on his horse, holding up his right hand to his men ahead. He was just told of someone approaching. The white-wigged officer turns his head once they stopped and his eyes widen in recognition to the woman sitting limply in front of the dragoon man bringing her to them. At least that's what it appears as.

"What is she being brought here for?" The Lieutenant who had first arrived on the farm asked curiously, the concern not being hid in his tone. Victoria looked at him tiredly but the seething anger was in her clenched teeth. This man did not even try to stop the Colonel.

"Colonel Tavington ordered that she'd witness the hanging of her nephew then to be brought back to him and Cornwallis soon after."

"Well—" the lieutenant stuttered. "What if I am against a woman seeing—"

"It was the _Colonel's_ _orders_ , Lieutenant! He cares not if she is woman or if she's the unfortunate boy's aunt!"

"W-What horse will she be carried on? There's hardly no room in the caravan. She was shot, yes?"

A slouched Victoria narrows her eyes at the lieutenant who caught her angered face and turned red in the face himself. _Exactly_ , she quipped in her mind. _What's wrong with your horse? Don't want blood on your pristine coat? At least you tried to not let me be involved, you voiced that opinion quickly._

" _Unfortunately._ Just a graze. She should do fine walking then alongside her nephew. Would you like to be bounded by the hands, my dear?"

Victoria sharply breathed in at the dragoon officer's similar cold words of the Colonel. They were all him.

"I'm being given the choice?" she asks with a dry throat, searching for Gabriel up ahead with shifting eyes. He was being dragged by the back of a cart, bounded by the wrists and walking behind it.

"Clearly."

"Well, it'd be nice to not be bounded. My arm shouldn't be pulled—" She screamed then when shots were fired at them, and a warm liquid splashed against her back. The dragoon officer right behind her falling off his horse, dead.

 _"On the right!"_

 _"To the left!"_

Victoria reacted quickly, despite her fear, holding onto the horses reins tightly after seizing them and steadying the startled horse. The Lieutenant was not ordering a thing as shots were being fired from all directions it felt like. Every bullet made its target in the soldier's back, chest, or face. Whoever was firing being not a supporter of the crown.

Not a second later, the Lieutenant was shot from the back, the bullet exiting from his chest and blood spurts out his mouth. Upon witnessing this, she leans forward, low on her horses back. Her heavy head against its mane as she watches in pain. Her stiff arm clenched to her side cold and sore. She doesn't want any other bullet to find its way to her.

 _"Behind us! Up on the ridge!"_

 _"Form right!"_

" _To the right! About face!"_

 _"On the right to the rear!"_ One man that time yelled at the top of his lungs and they shifted their bayonets in sync.

 _"To the right! Fire!"_

Victoria relaxed in relief, finally catching Benjamin's familiar attire moving the quickest she had ever seen through the fallen tree limbs and foliage. One moment he had a musket, the next he came out from behind another tree with a pistol and shot a redcoat in the stomach.

How the bloody lobster-backs couldn't get him accurately, she'll never know. She doesn't have to know because they will all be dead _shortly._ Whoever Benjamin has helping him fire from the other side, they are speeding this shameful massacre up.

Benjamin's savage shouting caught her ears and her face found his, jumping out from behind a tree as more guns fired, and he had his tomahawk held high in the air, and the pistol in the other hand.

The redcoats which fell from the bullets shot from the right and his swinging, allowed her to finally see Gabriel struggling to cut his bondage.

Quickly, she dismounts to the forest floor not so gracefully as she planned in her head. She could catch her footing on the stirrup, but once she pulled herself down she fell back onto the ground and on her side, falling on her wounded arm with a pained cry out.

No bullets were being fired near her as the fighting men were ahead of her. Breathing in hisses but gathering her strength, she turns over on her stomach to quickly sit up to distract from the pain. Then she crawls with one hand over to the lifeless dragoon, taking the pistol out of his belt. Fiddling with the clanging metal, she finds that there is nothing loaded, so she fishes for ammunition and prepares it with shaking hands.

The tomahawk sung through the air and found its place in a man's chest. Victoria looked up just then seeing the man fall to his knees, and Benjamin was still fighting with four other redcoats therefore he couldn't see the one going up behind his son.

Pushing the hair out of her face she comes to a stand using the horse as a shield, and raises her right hand, cocking the pistol whilst she aimed at the man wrestling with Gabriel.

Before she knew it she had pulled the trigger. Its surprisingly booming sound becoming a familiar sound makes her eardrums echo in silence. The smoke had evaporated quickly into thin air as if it had a mind of its own, afraid of the person holding the gun who wasn't its rightful owner.

Gabriel eyes widened meeting her gaze, and watching her hands shake with the gun that had been aimed perfectly, and killed the man who was holding a knife to his throat.

"Miss Victoria," he races towards her engulfing her in a hug which she chokes on a sob she is still holding back. His hand retracted from her back feeling the warm blood caked on his late mother's favorite dress. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"You… You have nothing to be sorry for," she whispers in his ear as she pulled away, opening her arms to the two young boys Nathan and Samuel who drop the muskets that are bigger than they are.

"Are you okay?" Nathan asks her.

"Yes, yes," she plants a kiss on his forehead before doing the same to a silent Samuel who has his face buried in a clean part of her skirts. "Where's your father? Why is it silent?"

Looking up, she follows Gabriel's gaze to his father, who was on his knees in the foliage struggling. He had chased after one of the men because he was some good ways off.

But approaching closer, walking slowly, Victoria turned Samuel and Nathan's faces towards her skirts shielding their vision from the sight of their father brutally hacking at a redcoat soldier. Not only this sight, but also the horrifying appearance of Benjamin _painted_ in blood.

Finally, the man's lividness and crazed eyes glazed over in exhaustion as he caught his breath and came to a slow stand. While Victoria was aghast at this appalling sight, she briefly felt concern that he was hurt. Like he always looked, minus the blood covering him whole, he mirrored her current state of expression exactly.

Benjamin Martin stared with an unemotional face at his three present sons and Victoria, who stare at him wide-eyed, frightened at his state. With regret he stalked slowly to them, faintly nodding his head for them to start heading home. But they all stood frozen to their spots as he went past them to the nearby creek to wash as much blood off him as he could.

He had seen that face too many times before yet he never dreamed or dared to think he'd be the one to cause a large part of their innocence to be ripped from them and torn above their heads.

Victoria could only remove her hands from the short boy's shoulders, wincing when her cold arm went back to her side reluctantly.

"Come on, both of you, let's start heading home. It's all alright now," Gabriel took his two little brother's hands, Samuel stiffly took his sharing one last look with Victoria before hanging his head low.

Hearing water carefully splash further in the trees, she begins to make her way over to Benjamin's side to help him. Maybe not ask why he continued to 'hack' at that already dead man, just yet, but to give him the same guidance he had given her these past two years.

In one day he lost his second oldest son, Thomas, lost his house, his free working people helping him maintain his crop and land, and he let his children witness an atrocity and told them to _kill_ somebody.

All because of this one man who ruined it all for them. Colonel William Tavington.

If he had never showed up, Thomas could still be living, Victoria wouldn't have been shot, the house would be standing, Gabriel would have remained recovering or left to deliver the dispatches… it would have been like any normal day. Except it would have been their first 'normal day' in war time.

This was a different day, and not the wonderful kind of different. Benjamin splashed water on him incessantly, even tearing at his already torn shirt which was past saving because of all the bloodstains. There was still soot smeared on his face from his burning house as well.

"You did well…" Benjamin surprised her when he broke the tense silence. "You simply saved my son. I just… I lost it." His body crumpled over and fell into her arms in shuddering breaths. She was kneeling beside him by the river. "Their faces, Tillie… I will never forgive myself."

"You won't forgive yourself for a lot of things," she tells him. "But I think it's time you did. So you don't 'lose it' like that again."

"Oh I won't. I'm taking my children… and you, if you wish to continue living under the same roof as me, to our Aunt Charlotte's," he calmly told her as they came to a stand. He had removed enough of the blood from his face so he wasn't painted as red as a barn door. "We're going to stay there until we can rebuild."

"Please don't think of yourself—" Victoria fell limp, Benjamin caught her quickly.

"You shouldn't be feeling weak still. You were just grazed," he told her worriedly as he took her in his arms, and he hurriedly walked back to the forest road, and he placed her atop the horse she was on and he climbed up behind her.

"I had no dinner last night or breakfast this morning. I think dirt or smoke got in the wound. It's getting infected," her mouth numbly said. Her mind was hardly processing her own words and couldn't comprehend how they made no sense.

"You're going to be taken care of at Charlotte's, and bathed. We all need it. We're going to get the children, bury Thomas, get the wagon and head out," he tactfully told her. "The patrol will come and find that mess soon. They will know somethings wrong when twenty of their men don't show up."

"Thank you, Benjamin," she falls back against his chest with a sigh as they rode forward, and she began to fall asleep. Hearing no response from him caused her to believe he merely dismissed it altogether, meaning she didn't have to thank him for saving her, but another part was he was in grief, and couldn't believe he had brought himself to do all that killing he hadn't done in so long.

After all, he _simply_ lost one of his sons, and he _simply_ lost it. What parent wouldn't? What man wouldn't?

He and his two young sons saved her and Gabriel from an unknown fate. If he hadn't come when he did, they could have ended up just like her aunt and uncle, and Thomas.

It was foolish hope to think they'd remain unaffected by the war. What person wouldn't think that? Or at least try to?

* * *

"Sir, we have the Private the Cherokee scouts brought in," Captain Bordon informs the Colonel as they enter the busy, operating tent.

"Private?" The Colonel called his attention.

"Private," Captain Bordon softly spoke up, successfully gaining the dozed off Private's attention, who tries to sit up. "Colonel William Tavington, Green Dragoons."

"What happened? Who did this?" The Colonel curiously asks. His tone calm as it had been before he and his men had to burn down some farmer's house and barn.

"Him," The Private turned to his side, not able to sit up as he wanted to because of the bullet wound in his chest. "It was mad. I couldn't tell you what it was."

"Calm down," Colonel Tavington stepped closer then, seeing the man's pain and discomfort trying to answer without a broken voice. "Calm down, man. Twenty of His Majesty's soldiers are dead and one of my men who was escorting a hostage. And I need to know how."

"-He said there was b—"

"Were you there? Then let him speak!" The Colonel hissed at the man behind him before returning to softer tones, facing the uncomfortable Private. "Take your time, and tell me, how many were there? Were they militia, were they Regulars?"

"I don't really remember how many. Maybe one."

Tavington straightened, his eyes narrowed in disbelief, "One man. Really?"

"He was in the flank. All around us. Amongst us. I could barely see him. He was there then he was gone," the Private's throat grew hoarse, making it sound like he was about to cry.

"He just vanished… Sounds more like a ghost than a man."

"Yes, a ghost," The Private nodded his head ongoingly. The terror in his eyes not missed by Tavington. "He was like a ghost."

"What of the hostage? Did you see a woman there?"

"I—I heard of her being talked about by the other men. I was near the front. So I could only catch a glimpse of her before I was wounded. It happened so quick."

"Enough. Bordon, take a patrol. See if we can capture this ghost before word of his exploits spread and find _Miss Gossett_ —Who's this?" Tavington went trailing off into a rant as he turned around to face a man a head taller than himself. The brief look of alarm on the tall man's face vanished once he met his eyes.

"Sir, this is Captain Wilkins. He was with the Loyalist Colonial Militia. I thought he might be of some use," Captain Bordon relayed.

"Another colonial," The Colonel sighed in dismay under his breath. "Tell me, Captain Wilkins, where do your loyalties lie?"

"To king and country, sir," Captain Wilkins answers directly. His missing British accent not going unnoticed by Tavington either.

"Why should I trust a man who'd betray his neighbors?"

"Those neighbors of mine who stand against England deserve to die a traitors death," Captain Wilkins carefully responded as he clutched his newly issued dragoon helmet to his side.

"We'll see," Colonel Tavington briskly nodded his head and bowed out of the tent with Captain Bordon following close behind leaving a distraught Wilkin's alone with the injured soldier who was the only survivor involved in a killing.

Wilkins knew he wasn't hallucinating hearing the Colonel utter Miss Gossett's name, a name he hasn't heard of in a year since he joined the Loyalist Colonial militia. What did he have to do with her?

* * *

Victoria laid in the back of the covered wagon, little William looking out the back of it while Benjamin drove it hurriedly towards Charlotte's plantation with the goal to make it by nightfall, which is succeeded. The other children sit near him in the front and Gabriel had taken the dragoon horse Benjamin and she had to ride back to the Martin's land.

"Mr. Martin!" A man called out. Victoria heard as she was in and out of sleep because of the creaking of the wooden wheels and the bumps in the road shaking her awake—frightening her to no end thinking she is back in the Colonel's hold, trapped on top his horse.

"Almost there, Tillie," William looked back at her worriedly, but his innocent voice sounded every bit brave and confident she'll be alright. To this she smiles for the first time that day. _This entire day… All of this happened…_ Who knew she'd wake up this morning and be shot? Surely, Thomas didn't know either… And neither did the wounded Patriots who some were able to recuperate from their injuries and plan to head back to their army. _Everything and everyone was gone._

Thomas… He was buried next to his mother's grave once they returned to the burnt down home to pick up Margaret, William, and Susan. The afternoon sun shone its golden beams down just for them it felt like. They were warm and pleasant. The Martin family and Victoria surely knew Thomas made it to the Lord's hands and rejoined with his mother.

"Come here, darling. Don't fall out the back," she holds her arms out to William to come closer to her, which he does hesitantly, looking at the blood all over her most of which was old and from the patients she took care of. The blood from the rescue was all on the back of the dress. "Most of this isn't mine, and you won't hurt me. Don't be scared of me. I'm just messy right now."

"Never," he shakes his head and lays against her chest exhausted. Sometime during that sweet moment, she had blacked out, and vaguely remembers the voices of men and a man's broad arms lift her out of the wagon.

She can only remember when she opened her eyes, she felt her head lulling to one side and the other. Flickering candlelight filled the dark room she was in

"You're safe now," a curly, blonde haired woman is looking down at her like an angel. Her weary blue eyes fighting to stay awake themselves.

"Are you Miss Charlotte?" Victoria asks the finely dressed woman.

"Yes, I am she. Your dress was replaced and your wound was tended to. I have some pain reliever to take by mouth whenever you're able. How do you feel?"

"Tired. Thirsty…" she trailed off with a dry voice saying this feeling her heart begin to beat at its regular, healthy and calm rhythm when she looks at the woman smiling down at her. "Thank you."

"You do not need to thank me. I'll have fresh water brought to your bedside. This water was used to clean you up until you can be bathed in the morning," Charlotte took the silver water pitcher and the bowl probably filled with grimy water, and left the room Victoria was roomed in alone.

When the woman left, Victoria slowly lifted her blanket and peered underneath the covers to see that she was wearing a cotton, white nightgown feeling stiff as if it was just washed and dried and pressed today.

"Ma'am?" One of the servants enters her room immediately. "I have some water for you. I'm so sorry you were hurt."

Victoria shakes her head, smiling faintly, "You have nothing to be sorry for. It was an accident. Do you think I could be drawn a bath tonight? I don't wish to remain unclean another day and sleep like this."

"Of course, I'll be right back with the hot water and the women to help you," the servant told her, quickly leaving the room and with a hushed voice she hears him telling the others to get things ready.

How many servants does their Aunt Charlotte have? She wonders to herself as she rubs above her wounded arm, her fingers trail along the wrappings like a wall.

While the servants were preparing everything, taking some time because they were filling the wash tub in the bathing room across the hall as quiet as they could to not wake the children, Victoria sat up in her bed and thought deeply as she sipped some water.

 _Could my aunt still be alive? Surely the redcoats… or these Green Dragoons… wouldn't truly harm a woman? Maybe she was just taken hostage like I was._

 _But they were able to kill my uncle before the town's eyes, and my husband was pulled out of his tent during the night some days after just marrying me. And recalling Colonel Tavington's threat, that he does not care if they are woman or child, he would give them what they deserve._

 _…And Thomas was shot for running to his brother, and shoving an officer out the way. That could have been handled differently! All of this could have happened differently!_

"It's not fair," she mumbles to herself, eyeing her arm that is doing just fine now. It's sore, but it certainly doesn't hurt as it did earlier. She was just grazed after all and probably silly for feeling such pain when it wasn't a big deal…

But it was! She was still shot at. Shot by that _stupid_ man, a haughty Colonel who had the upper hand this time. Victoria couldn't wrap her mind around any of it just yet, and she may never will. The only thing she can wrap her mind around is that she can't live under the same roof as Benjamin Martin anymore being helpless for her own self. Her friend had certainly read her mind by the creek hours ago.

Not because of what he had done will she leave, but because she is tired. She is tired of raising children that aren't her own… tired of not being the independent woman she really is, and tired of not having any money. She wants her life back. Not her life with her parents, but... a life… on her own…

Sighing, her head drops to her chest, holding the glass of water with both hands tightly and looking down at it with tears trailing down her face. She didn't know how long she was staring at the glass, watching the candle's dancing flames be caught in the shiny glass and move along it like it was part of it. After all, it took fire to make glass.

In her inner musings, trailing from simple things to calm herself such as light being caught in glass, to her position in life and what she can do about it, she didn't hear the servants come in to take her to the wash room.

"Can you stand, ma'am?"

"Yes- yes, thank you," Victoria snapped from her thoughts, placing the cup on the bedside table, pushing the covers off her and comes to a stand. Her mind briefly hallucinated her once shaking hand holding the pistol and placing that on the bedside table instead. Though the delusion didn't alarm her much to her surprise. She felt angry.

Once she had sank herself into the washtub, the water hot and stinging her aching bones, submersing her arm made her mind think clearer.

She has been officially put in a position where she can be a lonely spinster the rest of her life… at the still ripe age of twenty-one. The war wasn't to blame anymore, or her parents for not being the wonderful parents she desperately needed and desired to have. Herself was to blame, for doing nothing when her aunt and uncle were killed. She should have sought revenge then. But her husband literally walking into her life distracted her and she fell in love. He took care of her and added to her flame.

 _They_ aren't the only people this has happened to. _Death_. She was sure of that.

* * *

" _Don't you walk away from me, boy!"_ Benjamin growled with an intimidating boom of his voice.

In the early hours of morning, Victoria sat on the staircase tiredly, remaining silent at the scene of Gabriel beginning to head back out to the army but his father forbids it.

"I'm sorry father, I'll find you when this is all over," Gabriel coolly tells him with resolve.

"No, you're-you're not going—I forbid you to go!"

" _I'm not a child!"_

"You're _my_ child!"

"…Goodbye, Father," Gabriel sighs as he officially stepped out the front door and went down the porch in a hasty walk to his horse.

Victoria watched Charlotte go up behind Benjamin and stand comfortingly close to him and outstretch a hand to hold him still should he race after his son.

"Gabriel!" Benjamin raises his voice once more but not in anger, but so Gabriel can hear him clearly through his choppy voice. "Thomas is dead. How many more will have to die before you heed my word?"

Victoria doesn't know how long she remained sitting on one of the steps of the staircase. She completely was in her own world and not listening to Benjamin return to his chair in the parlor shaking with nervous breaths and venting to Charlotte.

Unbeknownst to them, the young woman was considering her options after getting up. One of the options being something unheard of or possibly not expected. However after yesterday's events and other past events, she believes this choice to get her life back on path will be the best choice she ever made. It's the only choice she has to make unless she wishes to remain who she was for the past three years.

 **A/N: Sorry if this seemed short, but I was trying my hardest to get this finished and not make it too long. Maybe it's because I'm ill right now and my mind isn't thinking clearly. But I have free time to type so I'm trying to make the most of it by updating this story.**

 **Any whom, Victoria was rescued! And Colonel Tavington is after her. Next chapter she will 'try' and hopefully succeed in joining Benjamin in the war ;) and she will meet the great Jean Villeneuve.**

 **I hope you all enjoyed, please review! :)**


	7. Chapter 6: You Fool

**Chapter 6: You Fool**

After a quick but ever thoughtful decision of his own, Benjamin Martin decided to go after his son and join him in the war. It was a decision he feared, much like every other man, but with his family threatened and now homeless because of the tyrannical King's men he had no other choice.

During his packing in the middle of his loud thoughts, he heard a brisk knock. Dropping his muskets with a clang on his bed, he goes to his bedroom door and answers it not expecting to see a fidgeting Victoria, wearing the same cotton nightgown she was changed into last night. Quickly, Benjamin tied up the front strings of his undershirt caught off guard.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you," she says first looking away while he did so. He didn't do too well of a job. His dark chest hair is still visible.

"What's wrong?" He asks immediately, finishing the process quickly without tearing his eyes from hers.

"Benjamin, I wish to come. To serve."

He stares at her with a crinkled brow, leaning against the door frame, "What—What do you mean?"

Her tongue unnoticeably licks over her lips, pursing them inwards nervously, knowing how audacious she is being to ask this.

"I mean to follow with you and Gabriel, and offer my services to the Continental Army."

"No—you…" His thumb reaches to the bridge of his nose and rubs it. "You wish to _serve_? Am I hearing this right?"

"Yes. I wish to _serve_. I want to serve. With your allowance of course, and following you."

"But to be a Provision follower?" he grimaces. "Victoria, you're not that desperate. You're working, well, _was_ working at my house. But I've turned you over to the children's Aunt Charlotte's plantation, still working for me and making sure my children—"

She sighs deeply and on purposely loud, "Freely. I work for you freely. You offered me a home where I had nothing, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Payment I know was not possible… if it was I refused it because that would have been wrong to accept…"

"Charlotte won't take no for an answer," Benjamin strikingly mentions. "She'll pay you more than enough-"

"-But I must get onto my feet and do something outside of caring for children and try gaining back my life. I will gain some monetary means back properly, not from good friends or friends of friends," Victoria interrupted. "Which leads me to my point. The army will pay me greatly. A _widow_ of a late war veteran alongside our fighting soldiers. They need help, Ben."

"I understand, Victoria, I do," Benjamin tries his hardest to maintain a calm and steady voice as he would to his children asking for things he can't give them. "But following an army is not a good something even if it pays. You're not that kind of lady—"

"—Not that kind of lady? Where is your mind? And I never said I'd follow the army. I said I offer my services. I'd follow _you_. I wish to _also_ serve, in place of my husband where he couldn't finish… in disguise as a man. And earn the substantial payment I never received. I will fight is what I am trying to say. You can allow it—"

"You can't!" He catches her off guard now but with his raised voice, looking at her like she's lost her mind with his dark eye brows risen to his hairline, "You can't! I can't! You're a woman, they don't allow women to fight. That's wrong—you can't pretend to be a man to get a man's pay. Tillie, _where is your mind_ thinking?"

"It is thinking quite fine after two whole years now. I'm aware of that, but they allow children? Boys? Thirteen-year old's are out there, Benjamin. They're all our countrymen despite, and I'll be proud to be amongst them. What else can I do? What else do I got to live for?"

"I'm sure you would be proud... What's that to be proud of?!" He started to sound calm before exclaiming at the top of his voice once more. His heart grew more and more disheartened the further she spoke. "What else can you do? You have _high_ potential to remarry. That black you used to wear…"

Benjamin paused for a second to place his hand on her cheek to ensure his words are to be taken as kind and convincing as they should be. "That didn't faze any man's sights. It sure as hell didn't faze mine. You're young, you're beautiful, you're a kind and proud little Patriot supporter, and you can't be killed by a bullet or disease! You—you need to stay with my children and look after them. I need you to do just that. I won't let it happen. _I won't see it happen_."

"I know you wouldn't," she looks at him considerately with watery eyes, warmed by his words even if they are upset. "And Charlotte is looking after them with her many servants. I will also _not_ be killed by a bullet or disease and if I am, so help me, I will not mind. It's better than being killed for almost slapping an officer. I defended your son, too."

He splutters, his knuckles turning white around the doorknob he still clutches. "Bet—Better than? Not mind? Are you that out of touch with yourself? Don't make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game."

"I am not _out of touch_ with myself," she mutters with a frown. "I just know what I want. How dare you think I say that it's a game. _It isn't_."

"People die out there, Victoria. They die, and they aren't remembered, no matter how dedicated or decorated," Benjamin's hollowed voice makes the wooden floorboards creak. Or it is that someone is standing at the top of the staircase, but no one made to glance. "The battle is remembered but they aren't. Are you willing to be lost to everyone? To become nothing more than a number in a book? If you are accounted for. Because that's what's going to happen—"

"It won't happen! You just said it wouldn't!" Victoria recomposes herself after losing her temper snapping back. "I will be trained _better_ , Benjamin. And you will be there like you always have been. I knew how to shoot when Gabriel and Thom—" she trailed off just when he wanted to interrupt.

"—Look, you're better off waiting patiently for Congress to reimburse you. You'll get recognized and you'll get your money one day. You can't take all those risks in your position."

"My position for two whole years?! I'm past waiting!" she growls with tears stinging her eyes. Her foot stomped the ground in frustration. "How about that position, yeah? I will never be recognized as his wife nor will I be able to remarry! Don't you see? I have _nothing_ to my name."

"Why won't you be able to remarry? What makes you believe so?" Benjamin reproached. One of his burly hands go to rest above hers on the door frame making her regain her thoughts. _He wanted to marry her. He wanted to love her. He was willing to._

"Because I won't find love again. That's my mistake, perhaps… marrying too soon. Marrying for love… not being a good daughter… trying to see other men as my husband but they aren't him. As of now, signs are pointing in the direction for me to remain silent, use what's left of my name in this town, and marry for money and status like every other woman. The _position_ I believe you said, the one that I am stuck in naturally."

"Tillie… Come on now. Not all do. They don't have that luxury some of them," Benjamin shook his head, inhaling loudly. His temper had long since diminished, but his sorrow will forever remain and continue increasing. He's already got Gabriel out there, again, now he himself, and now _potentially_ Victoria? There is no end. Even if she was just there tending to the wounded fresh off the battlefield, he couldn't let her or watch her be exposed to that gruesomeness again. "I won't allow you to do that to yourself. You left that life behind you, you don't want to not marry for love. Don't regret your decisions."

"I don't want to marry that way either. But then I don't want to remain helpless when I can do something about it until I am able to return to my old life with something to my name. That old life being my quiet, sensibly lavish life. Happy. With a close loved one."

"Well that there should tell you something. You're a closed loved one to _me_ and my family. Just stay with my children. You should be more patient."

"But where did that get you?" She accidentally bit back too hard. His face fell, and his hand withdrawn to his arms crossed in front of him as he looked down with a long inhale and exhale.

"Benjamin, I didn't mean that-"

"-I will talk to Harry.. Colonel Burwell. He'll be able to give you something, work up something…"

"Benjamin, please forgive me first for saying that. I already never will forgive myself, I need to control my tongue better."

He looks at her with blue eyes of ardent fondness, "Of course I do. I always forgive you."

She nods her head at this, but he shook his head fearfully seeing her clear her throat about to explain herself again. "Alright. Now, I understand we are all suffering and sacrificing—And you may or may not let me join or follow you-" she quickly added before he could inch close to her face to tell her _no_.

"But I feel I'm not sacrificing enough. I still want to fight. Hear me out one more time."

"Tillie.." He never said for her to stop, nor did he sound angry. He was listening as any good person would. As any _good man_ would.

"I also want revenge as much as you do… But revenge for my aunt and uncle is my own. I witnessed yesterday what I went through three years ago all over again. This can't keep happening. And Tavington? Benjamin, he will be after me. How about that?"

Benjamin inhales sharply once more, not at all considering this. _She actually has a true valid reason to join! Damn it all._

"I have nothing to hold me back from doing what I am being called to do what I need to do. Not to mention, I can heal a great amount of wounds that many would die from if not treated properly. And mending clothes… Being the Martha Washington of sorts for our army. I must keep it all clean and give them high morale."

"What?" He chuckles now, this time truly amused. His serious thoughts swept to the side. For once he appeared convinced. "Someone's been looking at the paper and furthering her reading and writing. But 'our' army?"

"Not what you think it means," she giggles, trying to keep him in a good mood. Her rosy complexion falling back to its healthy olive hue and her eyes of fire-forged metal stare into his with resolve. "I mean to say I already accept it that I am a part of it, and its already my family like America is. Fighting for the true independence we all desire. I get my money, your family is safe, I am safe with you and from keeping them all from harm, and I get to be me by the end of it. A free version of myself I cannot fathom right now."

Benjamin could not deny her words or ignore them. Not just the reasons he painfully accepts, or her bravely volunteering to do the unthinkable amongst all these women down south, but that Tavington coming after her and arresting her once more? Shooting her if she moved a muscle? This he will gladly oblige to do, to keep Victoria within his sights and hidden amongst a future militia he will probably be given orders to create. That Colonel cannot ever hope to find her with them and the ghost.

In the end, it was those eyes of hers and her words—they won him over every time. Words like that are of a true luminary of a person. Benjamin knew deep down if he didn't allow her to join with him, he would regret it as he had many things he regretted in the past. Most of those regrets were of turning away many people in many ways, save for his late beloved wife.

He's not all for her fighting, but being a healer and travelling with them can be worked with… And an extra shooter is always needed. She could always hunt.

"We'll work something out, then. I'll come speak to you in a moment, privately. Let me just let it all sink in. For now, you go get Charlotte to find you some extra men's clothes that can fit you."

She nodded her head, mumbling just as quietly so that only he could hear, "Thank you, Ben."

"Don't thank me yet."

* * *

The breezy morning air hitting Victoria's face while exiting Ms. Charlotte's home gave her a sense of peace. For a moment she blinked and stopped on the middle of the porch to enjoy the view of the Santee river afar and off to the side, and the gigantic mature oak trees all around and straight ahead, lining the path she will be taking with Benjamin.

Then the nerves took hold. She looked far down the path that is right before her eyes and very feet. Victoria had never experienced such a significant moment as this. There is still time to back out and not travel down this path leading to her future travelling and serving for who knows how long, but her decision in her very soul and mind was made. It _must_ be done, and she _must_ see it through no matter what happens.

"Tillie too?" Victoria hears the small, fretting voice of William echo towards her.

She finally collects her breath, tightens her grip on her only bag of extra clothes and necessities she will want with her (which is not much thanks to the fire burning all her possessions..) and walks down the steps towards the Martin family and Ms. Charlotte on the front lawn, all gathered to say their farewells.

"Truly, you too, Victoria?" Little William asks once more, walking up to her and looking up at her different looking self.

"Yes, me too," Victoria smiles sadly down at him and the others. Her anxious and eager smile had immediately gone away the moment they all looked at her with confusion and fear. The confusion from seeing a woman in men's clothes and boots, which was not so common of a sight to them.

Benjamin walked over to take her bag from her to place on her horse.

"Why? You don't have to go. You can't go," Samuel speaks up next, suddenly growing defensive and scared. "What about telling us what to do?"

Victoria's hopeful smile grows painful, a tear even threatens to leave one of her eyes. "Your Aunt Charlotte can do that just as well as I, maybe even better. You actually got dressed this morning, Nathan."

"We'll miss you, Tillie. Please come home safe as soon as you can."

"And alive," Nathan grimly added.

"I promise," Victoria humorously glares at the boy know what he was thinking. His eyes shone with knowing at what she was remembering from their last dinner conversation all together. "And not a day will go by where I don't miss you."

"Miss," one of the slaves walks up to her kindly and holds his hand out to her. "Your other bag is already tied up. I shall help you onto your horse."

"Thank you, sir," Victoria nods her head to him thankfully, and proceeds to get onto her horse as the children say their last goodbyes to their father.

"When will you both be back, father?" Margaret asks him now.

"I don't know."

"Tomorrow?" William tries.

"No," His father shakes his head honestly. "Not tomorrow. You say your prayers, now."

"I will."

Benjamin turns to his remaining oldest son, "Nathan I want you to take care of your brother's and sister's and your Aunt Charlotte. I'm depending on you. As I am on you, Samuel. All right?"

"All right," Samuel nods his head promisingly but fearful. He looks like he had no sleep after yesterday's events no matter how hard their father and Aunt Charlotte soothed their worries and troubles.

Then the remaining young Martin, Susan, stares up at her father with large blue eyes as his hands go under her arms to lift her up to his face.

"Susan…" He murmurs dotingly. "Goodbye?"

Victoria swallows and holds back a sad sigh. Even she had high hopes of Susan speaking aloud to them both before they left! Surely little Susan knows that there is no certainty when they will return to them? These thoughts are shared with Benjamin and Charlotte, worrying about what the youngest child is thinking.

Benjamin settles with kissing Susan on her forehead before putting her back on her feet and turning to Charlotte next.

"Thank you…"

Victoria looks away from this last wholesome but awkward farewell. Benjamin seemed unsure how to leave Charlotte, but as ever understanding as the older woman is, she knew all he said by the look in his eyes. All she wanted to hear, too, was when he would return to her and his children.

In a matter of seconds, Benjamin stepped onto a spur, threw his left leg over the horse, grabbed the reins and beckoned Victoria to come along. They were soon both racing down the path leaving the home and their loved ones behind. The children and their aunt remained still and watched in uneasy silence until they disappeared in the distance. Some of them were hopeful that they would just maybe turn around.

* * *

 ** _Camden, South Carolina_**

Gabriel stayed frozen in his spot by the window for hours it felt like, to both himself and Victoria, who was standing in the same room as him and his father watching the battle from afar.

Thankfully Victoria had Benjamin to lead and guide as they rode through many woodsy areas where no person was around. It had never occurred to her how far they had traveled just yesterday from the Martin home to Ms. Charlotte's relocation when she was laying down in the back of a wagon, wounded and bleeding from being shot. Also, she had completely forgotten how arduous travelling is. Her wealthy days sitting in a plush cushioned coach are what she desperately wanted right now. Saddle riding with a leg on either side for copious amounts of time will take getting used to.

Luckily, she is carefully adjusting to this new comfort with ease before more trials and tribulations arise causing her to require this patience. And they had spotted Gabriel's horse left outside this abandoned mansion they are currently standing in. Victoria had let out the most relieved sigh in the world when she got off the chestnut colored horse, which also let out a breath when she was getting off as well.

As the battle continued, louder and more dreadful by the second, Gabriel finally turns around to only stare at them both in shock. "I'm not going back."

"Nah I didn't expect you would," his father commented quietly with all understanding. Benjamin stood from his perch at the table, and while handling his musket he went to stand beside his son, watching the rumbling battle still.

"That Gates is a damn fool," Benjamin uttered with loathe. "Spent too many years in the British Army, going muzzle to muzzle with Redcoats in open field, it's madness."

Right when Victoria made it to the two men, feeling she is not disturbing their uniting conversation after a fight the night before, she watched the British on the right make ready to shoot the Continental Army, now. Guns and cannons went off at once after a simple cry of _'fire!'_ and already the Patriots had a huge dent in their numbers.

She shuddered and looked away from the deadly view below of their countrymen falling to their death. Thoughts of her husband threatened to return to the front of her mind, but she refused to allow it.

"This battle was over before it began," Benjamin mumbled his last bit of thoughts before turning away as well, and putting his free hand on Victoria's shoulder not in order to comfort her (though he probably was) but to gain his son's attention.

Gabriel turned to her finally, ignoring the yells of men retreating outside. "Victoria, I apologize I never got to tell you farewell. Though it is a pleasure seeing you most likely one last time, I didn't expect you to come in person." He looked her over with an amused smirk after bowing his head politely. "You look beautiful, as always, but Aunt Charlotte had no extra dresses for once?"

"She'll be in disguise during travelling," was all Benjamin had to voice for Gabriel to understand. His son diverted his eyes to her light satchel over her dainty wide shoulders and now understood her hat as well. The look in his father's eyes shown he was not lying.

"What?" Gabriel swallows incredulously. "You can't be serious, father!"

Victoria's eyebrows shoot up in expectation of his response. Now he was not being the gentleman he just was.

"Colonel Tavington will be after her, Gabriel," Benjamin expresses his complete worry now. "I will not allow her to endanger our family, unintentionally. She will also be paid. She needs the work."

"What's the point of that if she'll just be endangering us? She will distract—"

"I will ensure, personally, that won't happen," Benjamin interrupts in defense making Victoria crack a smile and blush pink. His own eyes even sparkled at making her smile. It felt like there was no hardship occurring for once.

"She can be easily found out about by others. The Butcher should we ever cross paths with his dragoon, she will be spotted. By any marksman! _She can't act like a man_ ," Gabriel's teeth bare in frustration.

"Sure she can," Benjamin's tone shifts to one of positivity. "But yes, she will be known by just our men, if we get any who don't mind fighting a hard, losing battle. Our one and only provision follower and healer. I wouldn't want any other or believe in another for the survival of our service."

Victoria turned to Benjamin thoughtfully, and forever thankful, "Thank you."

Gabriel marched past them and left the room with enraging tension spilling from him in waves.

Benjamin removes his hand from her shoulder it was still on, she even felt the heat leave that spot.

He offered her a nod and waved her along, "We better follow him before he ditches us."

"I think he knows better to not," Victoria honestly says following behind him and down the stairs of the finest house she has been in since her Philadelphia days. Deep down, she knew this will be her last chance of true shelter in a home.

The rough soldier life Gabriel has always written to them about awaits her.

* * *

Overcast and damp, a sign of impending doom to Benjamin Martin, the three of them rode into the Continental Camp by afternoon where Colonel Burwell is located.

The sight of many wounded, and mostly bleeding soldiers crossed every line of sight. Victoria took special note of what the doctors, or acting doctors, were doing to treat them. Amputation saws were the most common, at least now. Others were lying there sleeping, or some being bandaged.

As for the soldiers who weren't wounded, they were walking around conversing regularly, or downcast, or weary from lack of sleep. Victoria had never felt so helpless or clueless. It was warned to her many times on what to expect, but seeing it with her own eyes, it was a nightmare.

Benjamin was the first to jump off his horse the instant he got there and asked to see the Commanding officer.

Spotting some working women adorning their proper clothing and even wearing caps (a style she could not like for herself), she did not get the chance to notice what they were doing, but it was exceedingly helpful nonetheless. She kept her head down as she walked behind Gabriel who had gained one soldier's attention sitting nearby picking up a discarded, muddy, torn American flag off the ground.

"It's a lost cause," the solider had said, with a fresh blooded bandage wrapped around his head so close to one of his eyes. It was a miracle he wasn't shot in the eye.

Victoria cringes on the inside as she chances at outright staring at the man since she is supposedly a 'man' herself right now. She must learn to toss all lady etiquette aside, at least in this camp.

"Maybe we have your first duty here," Gabriel whispers a mild quip to her when they walked away, pulling at his satchel with the said American flag sticking out of it.

Victoria made no comment as she focused on following Benjamin's exact steps to the tent he is currently standing in.

"So who's in command?" She had heard Benjamin ask prior to walking into the tent, ducking her head with Gabriel following suit. She felt strange pretending to be a man using men's manners and not the lady etiquette that flows in her from head to toes. It was also very definite to remove her hat out of respect, but it was all for hiding herself, so she did not. According to outside the tent, many of the men didn't care. Many wore hats, many just had their hair tied in queues or down loose and long to their shoulders. She blended right in.

"I am. I think," an overtired Colonel Burwell with hair in disarray mumbled leaning against one of the tent poles. He looked like he just finished fussing at someone before Benjamin walked in on him.

"What are my orders?" Benjamin asks.

"We're a breath away from losing this war, Benjamin. In the north, Washington is reeling from Morristown. He's running and hiding from 12,000 Redcoats. In the south, Cornwallis has broken our back. Captured over 5000 of our troops when he took Charles Town."

"And he destroyed the only army between him and New York," Benjamin added, cutting in. "So, nothing can stop him from heading north to finish off Washington."

Colonel Burwell motions to the map, " _Unless_ we can keep Cornwallis in the south till the French arrive. They've promised a fleet and 10,000 troops."

"When?"

The Colonel seemed to have dampened more in spirit, adjusting his bent over back as he leans over the table of maps and figurines marking troop placements. His drop in confident manner proven so, "Ah, six months at the earliest."

Benjamin stares at the man with an eloquent leer, "You actually trust the French to keep their word?"

A chair being pushed back to the far right of the two conversing men catches Benjamin's ear, and he turns to who is giving him an icy and defensive glare.

 _"Absolument."_

The man dressed in a light blue uniform not much older Benjamin spoke with a French enunciation and stepped closer daringly. The frost in his blue eyes not melting, Victoria sees with nerves beginning to prick her arms and her neck. She had never met a foreigner before let alone be in the same room or same 'tent' as one.

But not just any foreigner. The evidently _high-class_ Frenchman was a serious, stand-offish middle-aged man as well. He did look more vigorous and younger despite his withered face and thick, curled brown hair beginning to go grey, yet still full of its youthful texture and not slicked back into a leather tie like most his age. Very much unlike the older men Victoria is used to seeing in Charles Town.

Charles Town men were reserved and radical. The surrounding parts they were all frontiersmen or farmers like Benjamin, tough, but reserved even then. This Frenchman held authority, class, and dignity much like Colonel Burwell and Benjamin if not more.

Victoria glanced away, feeling rude she was staring at him like he was someone she had never seen before. Well, she hasn't. His hair, those misty blue eyes set above his big French nose, and gentle fatherly face were the attributes that struck her.

"Benjamin Martin, Major Jean Villeneuve of the French Seventh Light Foot. He's here to help train the militia," the Colonel introduces while Benjamin looks down at his feet awkwardly, meeting the Frenchman's eyes occasionally to not be ruder than he himself had.

Answering her thoughts, Victoria nods her head carefully. No wonder the Frenchman looked authoritative because he is a Major of a 'French' regiment.

"The hero of Fort Wilderness your reputation precedes you," Major Jean Villeneuve spoke in waveringly quick words. The hint of insult in his tone and spite in his eyes, still.

Benjamin shakes his head dismissing the greeting, turning back to Burwell, "You really expect to hold Cornwallis here using just militia?"

"Not me. You."

"Harry, they're not soldiers, they're farmers. They'd be better off letting the British march through," Benjamin tells the Colonel with a smile of disbelief at the man's words.

"They'd be better off, but the cause wouldn't," Colonel Burwell wags a finger as he steps aside and grabs an important document he begins to fill out.

"How many men does Cornwallis have?" Benjamin asks now.

"8000 infantry, and around 600 cavalry," Burwell provides. Victoria fidgeted at Gabriel's side who smirked. He figured she put the numbers together that there are _a lot_ of British. He couldn't blame her, though, when he was first told how many men he would be staring across a battlefield at two years ago, he didn't believe it. His letters were detailed for this very reason. He couldn't shake any fear he still gets to this day over how many British keep coming through the fog. Except that one time he crossed the Delaware on one of the many whaling boats.

"I'm giving you a field commission as a Colonel," Colonel Burwell continues to tell him as he writes.

Benjamin takes his chance to ask, "Might I request that you transfer my son here under my command?"

Gabriel stutters, looking from Victoria beside him to the Colonel. He even started towards the man holding up the dispatches he's been carrying around forever, "Sir, no I— I—"

Colonel Burwell cuts him off with a final look and raise of eyebrows for emphasis, waving the paper, "Done."

"Thank you—" was all Benjamin was going to tell the man before he continued. But the Colonel beat him to it. He looked behind Gabriel at the lad. This lad was not adorning blue like the others in his regiment.

Then when he was about to question not seeing him before, he sees the 'boy's' huge, shining eyes and familiar heart-shaped face with a huge hat looming over it. "Victoria?"

Victoria froze in her place suddenly and felt all eyes on her.

Colonel Burwell studied her face long and hard before frowning considerably, and even saying her name again. "Victoria, what are you doing here—wearing?"

"My choice of clothing should be the least of your concern, sir. I was hoping you'd greet me kindly and ask about my wellbeing," she responds quickly as well, hoping the nervousness in her voice isn't showing. "It is well to see you again, Colonel Burwell, but for me, I'm rather not well of late. As you can see."

"She has resorted to living on her horse and following the call to war like other women," Benjamin tells the man, cutting her off and him before anything else could be said. "You know Congress is more than _six months late_ with their issues and they will never recognize her. We know it isn't your fault."

The French Major disregards the replication of the French fleet's arrival with an irritated, unhidden eye roll before he looks to the disguised woman once more. He was startled when he heard Colonel Burwell speak a woman's name upon recognizing her, but now the Major resumes looking still and collected, trying to hide his discomfort in front of the infamous Benjamin Martin.

It was no trouble of her being present here if he was ever asked his opinions, but it was odd seeing a woman adorn men's clothing and speaking forwardly.

Major Villeneuve looks her up and down well manneredly with his French cockade held to his chest. Victoria had met his gaze now and held it politely, thinking he was about to tell her something. And after all, she was caught sneaking a glance his way to judge his reaction of her being here. As for him visibly moving his head up and down, taking her in, not many men can do so with an elusive face and vicarious eyes. He did not seem troubled.

"I would hope so. But that doesn't explain why she's here dressed like a soldier—a man!" the Colonel stresses remaining behind his desk.

"But she holds herself up with the confidence many men are lacking, from what I have seen. The clothing is _the least of my concern_ ," Major Jean Villeneuve said, and Victoria found herself nodding her head to him courteously at his words. He immediately bowed his head in return though tautly, turning back to the two men. It may be no trouble, but now he feels tight. This scene in any way was unbecoming of a woman to be in such a discussion with three men… in the army and during a war too. France had none of it and certainly not the battalions during the French and Indian War.

The Colonel blinks twice at the French Major's words before turning back to Ben with a sigh, "What is this really, Ben? Women aren't allowed to fight. I can get in trouble for this."

"I know you can. And yes, they aren't allowed and they shouldn't. But technically, in a _local militia_ some things can be put aside. This is a _special_ case in my eyes," Benjamin put emphasis on this word drawing in the Colonel's attention entirely now. "She'll be listed as a man under _my_ commission, begrudgingly. Besides, she will only fight should she have to defend herself or when I say if we need more soldiers. She is to ultimately be our healer. We will need that and you know it. Perhaps a potential emissary too to spare our men for the bulk work."

"A special case?" Colonel Burwell asks more to himself than Benjamin. The reservation in his face crumbling to exhaustion. "Healer, yes. No one will offer their hands to a militia in the wilderness unless you search far outside this state. Just maybe. But _Emissary_? That's pushing it."

The Colonel chuckles at first in consideration, repeating Ben's words in his mind, but then hesitation crosses his face. "Can she ride to military posts? Alone? Remember where they are located should she be steered from her chosen path?"

"Yes, _she_ can, and _she_ actually prefers riding alone. I am here, sir," Victoria says in a rushed breath making Gabriel break into a discreet smirk he couldn't keep off his face. Even if he disagrees with this he can't help but be amused.

The energy in her bones returns, remembering this was how she was with her parents. "And I'm not at all forgetful and I will not be side saddling in a trot for one moment."

The Colonel bows his head, drowsily though the alertness in his eyes at her here making him seem awake, "That's very much believable. And… God forbid, what will you do should you be on the field, Miss Victoria?"

"I will have her disguise herself…" Benjamin exclaims before she could, slowly. "Like she is now."

"May have to make some tweaks, apparently," she mutters under her breath, nodding her head towards the Colonel, missing Major Villeneuve's covered amusement as a quick cough. The Major remaining silent throughout. His word not needed unless he was asked of his thoughts which may not happen.

"Colonel, if you can't trust my word on this and why this is a special case, then…" Benjamin trailed off.

"Why did you even bother asking me? You could have easily kept her out my sights and snuck her into your militia without anyone knowing," the Colonel asked a well-formed question as he scratches the back of his neck. "Which is worrisome, _Colonel_."

"Because I trust you, Colonel, and someone has to know. By the end of her time serving, whenever that may be, she will be given a full soldier's salary." Benjamin's eyes glisten with promise. "Hence why she is enlisting as a man. You know she's a special case. I will not say this once more."

Gabriel, meanwhile, looks down at his feet in anger and frustration. If his own father sees that a woman, who is of no relation to them, be considered more special than he? His own son? There must be more to it than Tavington being after her…

"Very well, Martin," The Colonel quickly breathed out, interrupting him. "It's not my honor I'm risking. She has no say against it, _apparently."_

"Why would I? I offered my services, willingly," she responds smiling at the Colonel who shakes his head unamused. "Thank you, very much, sir." The French major hummed to himself approvingly? He bowed his head to her as he motioned for her to walk out the tent first.

Gabriel was not far behind as he tightly squeezed his mouth shut in anger and brushed past the French Major upon exiting the tent (mumbling a quick 'pardon me') to get to Victoria and hiss at her.

"You're a fool!"

"I am the fool?" She walks quickly with him so close to her side, he was about to shove her in another direction it seemed. Her hand flew to her tricorn in panic when a gust of wind blew past them and Gabriel's brushing against her side did not help. His smirking at her remarks were just a dream then.

"You'd rather not be in your father's militia if I can recall correctly?"

"Because he's my father—taking orders from him like at home! You could barely pass by the Colonel as a man, or boy. Lord knows who else you'll come across," he condemned, and was careful to not let his voice rise any louder. "You are _not_ a man to handle this, and you can't even shoot straight."

Victoria had scoffed when he implicated she was a boy, but she spoke to him like he was his nanny, "Congratulations, your eyesight serves you well. And didn't I save your life yesterday? That will be all taken care of in due time, darling. And I have no worry over my honor, whatever is left of it."

"Don't be saying such things in the public eye, starting now," Gabriel shakes his head as he left her side abruptly, pausing in his walk to cut behind her to wait for his father. Victoria had kept walking past the pair of horses to her own next to someone else's that was brought near theirs after they had arrived.

She had no idea once more that the French Major was in her presence, following close behind silently to the horse that stands next to hers.

 _"If this is what the tenacious American woman is then I have finally been graced to meet one_ ," the Major discreetly said with his rich accent for her to hear only. She halted abruptly, her breath catching quietly that he had almost slammed into her back foolishly, his hat fumbling in his hands nearly dropping it.

He then offered her another polite bow of his head, far from the tautness it was moments ago. He tried appearing kind this time in a camp filled with forlorn, grave, and unemotional faces. But some of his discomfort of her being dressed as a man was still evident in his judgmental gaze as he swallowed pitifully for her right in front of her.

"Major Jean Villeneuve, mademoiselle."

She pauses before she introduces herself, waiting for some soldiers to walk completely past them, and to decide on how to be addressed. She is widowed... but she was to keep her husbands name a part of hers until she remarried... as society says. "Victoria Gossett Lawson, monsieur. It's an honor to meet you."

"Non, the honors all mine, Mrs. Victoria."

"Forgive me, sir, but you do not seem to be against me being here, unless you are that well at hiding your true thoughts," she asks him rather boldly, to which he lifted an eyebrow in surprise, and he felt his throat tighten unsure how to respond.

"Perhaps I am well at hiding my true thoughts. But am I against you being here?" He considers to himself for a moment as he looked away to take a few more strides to his horse and pet him. "You are to be a healer which I am grateful for that someone has willingly offered to aid us. I have no doubt you will have talent in treating the wounded and ill. Being an emissary, however, I will have to see for myself how well you ride and your sense of direction."

Victoria's lips squeezed into a thin, close lip smile when he said this.

"For fighting, that I must say I am against," Jean turns to her now, and finishes with a polite sigh. "And I mean no insult towards you, my lady."

"No, no insult, sir. I understand that, thank you," she appreciatively says. "That will be my greatest burden on you all I'm afraid. However, with my outfit and fighting… capability aside, do you consider me as an equal on every level, or just on the issue for this war? You were clearly born into the French aristocracy, and after a quick first meeting, you seem to view me the same as you despite you disgruntled seconds ago."

He shifts taken aback in his stiff stance as he made ready his horse. A sharp inhale from Jean was even heard by her little ears. "That I was, you are observant, and quick with your words. I also meant no _ill will_ towards you, Mrs. Lawson. Liberty is for all, _madame_."

She squeezes her lips shut, feeling a pang in her heart. He had at first called her mademoiselle, a single woman. Madame is a married woman. She didn't have the heart to correct him.

"Indeed it is."

He put his hat on his head, looking at the young woman entirely now, "This country and its rebels are fighting for that overall belief. It would be wrong of me in that sense and honorably, myself, to see you as naught."

She could only stare at him admiringly, and appreciatively, she hopes she was staring at him mostly for the latter. He had looked away from her after he spoke and looked like he was in his own thoughts now. So, she took this as her cue to prepare to leave, until she remembered that this Major is supposed to be training the militia.

"Colonel," Gabriel rushed up behind his father. "I've been a soldier for two years. As a scout, horseman, marksman, scavenger."

Victoria snaps her head in his direction so quick, the Frenchman started in alarm having seen her in his peripheral vision.

"Is that so?" Benjamin asks Victoria's same question. Gabriel had seemed to leave many things out of his letters to home.

"I'd be of better use with Regulars."

Victoria heaved a sigh at that unnecessary comment while she got onto her horse, biting back a quick remark saying he should then. Sure enough, Gabriel caught her eyes and nodded in apology.

"Where'd you learn all that riding, shooting, scavenging?" Benjamin asked him without hiding his curiosity. He had mounted his horse as well with his son.

"My father taught me."

"Teach you any humility?"

"He tried. It didn't take."

"Your father also taught you every trail between here and Charleston," Victoria cut in. "Which is one of the reasons why he transferred you, may I remind you."

Gabriel looked at her with such distaste, as a younger brother would an older sister who got her way, but his father silenced him before he could speak.

"Yes, I did. We'll be putting our minds to this for quite some time," Benjamin concurs. "So to start, we'll put the word out. Start on the south side of-"

Gabriel interrupts his father, "We'll cover more ground if we split up."

"Very well, Corporal. You take—"

"—She stays with you," he interrupted once more making Victoria huff, this time exasperated.

"You take Harrisville, Pembroke, Wakefield. I'll start on the north side. Meet at the Old Spanish Mission in Black Swamp."

"Why there?" She inquires to Benjamin. She has heard her late uncle mention it only once when he was recalling his 'younger' days in war. He wasn't that young back when, but he sure did paint himself as a quick-moving killer.

Now Ben explains to her as if its palpable why they are going there.

"It's black. And it's swamp. Uncharted areas by the British. We will never be found."

"Found by mosquitoes. I'd better get some more herbs and oils then," she remarks annoyingly at the thought of men coming to her with infinite bites if they aren't wounded _. To help scratch them? Rub them? No. That will not happen._

"True," Jean Villeneuve recognizes her claim. "The hospital tent is on the way out. They will supply you with what you need depending on how much they need for here and have left."

"I suppose I'll be riding with you both, then?" She asks as she clears her throat, now a bit uncomfortable with her current thoughts of men taking advantage of her help. But she is also uncomfortable with the idea of travelling alone and finding this swamp on her own. Surely, Benjamin wouldn't do that to her though, many men would now that its wartime. Victoria is a stray so to say. She wasn't married, courting, or taken by any means. She may as well be easily left to her own.

She is familiar with her surroundings, at the very least, but not at all familiar with a swamp and where it is located. When she got no answer, seeing the father staring after his oldest son beginning to trot off and the Frenchman next to him trying to get the man's attention but to no avail, she straightened in her saddle and turned her horse to leave towards the infirmary tent. She was feeling compelled to leave for that because Gabriel left in a rush of purpose. This means they will be leaving quite soon as well. Major things need to get done.

Like first, recruiting men for the Charleston militia.

"Corporal. Be careful," Benjamin called after his son who responded as any good obeying child would.

"Yes, sir."

The two men watched in silence at the young man riding off until Benjamin broke it.

"You have children?" Benjamin asked the Frenchman beside him.

Major Villeneuve masked his thoughts and privacy incredibly well. He recognized the casual tone of someone just making conversation, so the Frenchman held his words of more importance to himself as he had turned his horse so quick and took off after the disguised woman who left seconds before him. It was almost rude. And that's how Benjamin took it as.

"French," he muttered under his breath before following him in a straight shot down the center path of the camp lined with white tents. The infirmary tent easy to be seen because of the amount of other wounded, though not bloody like the one they just left near Colonel Burwell's tent.

Upon arriving at the infirmary tent, Ben can make out the form of Victoria taking a couple sacks and two heavy boxes full to the brim under their lids.

"You got all that?" Benjamin asks as he rides up last, stopping his horse for the last time until they head out and ride until they meet their destination. He catches the Frenchman still on his horse a few feet away with his head turned from them. He was not helping Victoria at all!

Ben thinks either the man is that aristocratic, loathing the fact that a disguised woman is joining the militia not just to heal, or he assumed the men in the healing tents would help 'the lad.' The Fort Wilderness hero hoped it was not all three which is what it appears to be.

Pausing her strapping, Victoria watches Benjamin jump off his horse to help, she responds, "We will need it, I assure you. You'll thank me later."

"What about bindings for your—for the wounded should we have some," Benjamin immediately caught himself before letting her secret slip in front of the people around the infirmary.

"It's all in stock. That will be handled at our destination, sir. Though I may need to borrow your horse to put the last few things on."

"Few, that's not more than four, right? Few is three or less…"

"I can count." She looks to him sarcastically. Even under her hat he can see traces of her amusement. "Yes, it's only two. It'll be enough for now."

..

 **A/N: Thank you to my three followers for enjoying this story and reviewing so kindly! And thank you to all the silent 'ghost' readers out there! ;)**

 **I finally overcame a period of writer's block for this part in the movie/story, I hope y'all enjoyed it once more. Now that this chapter is done and up, I have the next chapter so close to finish I hope to post it tomorrow! YAY! The enlistment at the tavern is where Benjamin, Jean, and Victoria will recruit the Black Swamp militia, and Victoria will meet new faces, and make some unlikely friends. Perhaps even one of these regular faces will be her future love? We will know one day.**

 **Victoria Gossett's story, and new life, is just beginning. Please review and stay tuned! :)**


	8. Chapter 7: The Recruitment

**Chapter 7: The Recruitment**

Riding in the eerily quiet woods on a sinking muddy trail (from past rainfall) made the approaching destination more unsettling. A loudly breathing Victoria rides miserably a bit of a ways back from Benjamin and Major Villeneuve. In the beginning, Benjamin frequently turned around to make sure she was still there and following, but the French Major began engaging him with some conversation she could only presume was about enlisting the right men. But every time Benjamin turned to her the Major would seize his attention forwards? The Frenchman was truly talking more than about the militia.

When the two men occasionally shared side long-glances at one another, and she saw their mouths take turns speaking, then returning to staring straight ahead, she knows they were discussing her (because the militia talk she could overhear!). And ignoring her, completely. Already the existence of herself was uncomfortable, at least with the well-experienced Frenchman she hardly knows who rides before her with a noble pomp. She feels it. It is hope that things will get better that is keeping her moving. It must not forever be uncomfortable and always be riding towards the back.

Victoria also felt the pains of being a woman come forward. Of all days and while riding, she is grateful to have had worn her sturdy lady underwear to comfort her pains. Cramps beneath her stomach and dizzy spots flickered in her vision every time she blinked. The reason why she is exhaling loudly after every calming inhale is because of the cramping pain. Not wearing a corset made it feel like heaven, ironically.

Therefore, the entire way to a tavern in the middle of nowhere was but a test to her will and patience. If she is to be the only woman with men around her for almost a year, she should get used to knowing when to stay back and out of the way unless she is told to be involved. Also, with this monthly reminder, she will need this 'emissary duty' for a chance to escape the camp life. But then perhaps she won't want to leave her soon to be 'family.' That seems like a fantasy now.

"Made it, Tillie!" Benjamin shouted over his shoulder to her, as all three of them quickened their steeds.

"Thank heavens," Victoria grumbled softly to herself spotting a candlelit wooden lodging just around the cluster of trees. Her emotions, too, she'll have to keep in check. Her monthly pains or not she cannot afford to be weak or temperamental, nor does she want anyone disliking her.

Now approaching nightfall and a thick fog rising on the hills caused from said rainstorm hours earlier, they barely made it with daylight to spare.

"Are they all not in their homes?" Major Villeneuve asks with all curiosity to no one in particular. "At least the homes that are near here."

"Nah," Benjamin shakes his head after he jumped off his horse with renewed energy for their serious task. Jean and Victoria copied exactly, though the woman took a long gulp of water from her canteen for good measure. "These people around these parts like to gather all together at most every night or so. Some can only get food from here. But I deem the war caused most of their lack of food…"

As soon as Benjamin finished saying this, the sound of drunk men singing loudly out of key poured from one of the open windows.

"And rise of spirits… It is a real tavern after all," Benjamin nods his head in approval. A reminiscent glint sparks in his eyes making Victoria suddenly very curious and concerned. What were his wild younger days like? He certainly left out many things because of her sensitive ears even though she was quite wild herself. But not as wild as the wildest man could be… like Benjamin Martin or any one of those drunken farmers in there.

"Are women allowed inside?" Victoria warily asks them both as they approach the doors. The two virile men go silent almost forgetting a delicate woman was with them.

It also gave rise to her suspicions on what they spoke of about her.

"I wouldn't dream why not," Jean had answered with a sickened sigh, pausing before the doors with the two of them. "A tavern, _apparently_ , in these colonies is the place for any woman to be hailed warmly by the company of _drunk_ men." The Frenchman's cynicism aimed towards Benjamin did not go unnoticed by either of them. It was as if he was mocking Ben for not thinking this one through.

Major Villeneuve then turns to her completely, his prudent eyes roaming over her appearance to check for something. "If only you had tighter bindings now, tied your hair back some more and wear the hat you were given, there's some chance they won't know you're a woman so shabbily dressed. You would be safer."

Her slighted look going unnoticed, Benjamin speaks against him. "Just for now, Victoria, where the hat until we go in. You'll be fine. They will look at everything on us and register our faces, but they won't fight you unless you give them cause to. You would be safer if you were covered up better, but you have too feminine of a face anyhow. Whoever does enlist and question you there will need an explanation I'm willing to give. Besides, your disguise is for when we travel and fight."

"Say I'm the healer. It's none of their business what else I do, they'll learn eventually and hopefully accept it. And feminine boys. I've seen some of those," Victoria mentions while putting on her hat.

"They have as well, no doubt about that. Tell you what, Tillie. We'll scope it out. If we come out you can come in with us. Just wait right here and don't leave this spot," he ushers her to stand outside the door as they walk in, shutting the door in her face but not before the Frenchman looked to her twice more making sure she was staying where she was told. Little did she recognize the look of alarm passing on Jean's face because Benjamin had said _'if'_ they come out.

Meanwhile she casts glances all around her and further down the muddy, well-trodden road where no other building exists. This is just a tavern in the middle of nowhere on this rolling hill in foggy dusk. A murder could take place, and no one would know about it. That was a feeling that shouldn't be felt by anyone who was aware enough to recognize it. Owls tutting in the woods they just travelled out of made it a tad bit eerier.

Sure enough just as quick as the two men went inside, the cheerful fiddle and accordion music spilling from the windows ceased playing, and the men came right back out but rather frightened. Jean spitting something out of his mouth near her feet made her yelp. If it weren't for that, she'd be gaping in fear at the raucous shouting, pounding on the door, and swearing inside! Now they appeared to be calm as they held the violently shaking door shut from the outside.

"What happened!" She asked in fright after jumping back to give them some room. Jean was the first to respond to her. "Why are they throwing knives?" She asks just when she hears the familiar sound of a knife splitting into the solid wood.

"Just to spook us out," he carefully lied. He did not want to alarm her anymore. "It's only bread they're throwing now, _madame._ "

"I think we came to the right place," Benjamin tells Jean and her over his shoulder as they hold the shaking door shut being hit by things from the inside.

"It doesn't look like it by what's happening," Victoria observes. "They're throwing bread, now! Losing all of their food now."

"And brandished their guns and knives!" Jean adds to her exclamation. "That was not wise what you had done Colonel—"

 _"Oi, Stop! They're patriot! That was Benjamin Martin!"_ A voice bellows on the inside causing all raucous inside to die, finally.

 _"Fort Wilderness hero, eh?"_

" _I know him with me own eyes."_

The door shakes no longer, and the tavern grew silent. The two men nod in silent agreement that it's safe to let go of the door's handle and allow it to be thrown wide open.

"Hero my _arse_ ," the French Major mutters under his breath while doing so. Victoria pretended she never heard him curse, but internally, she was laughing at the seemingly well-mannered man and his accent made it even more comical.

Her internal laughter seared instantly, though, at the once expected and now unexpected sight of the rough, dirty, suspicious, and distrustful looking men with guns aimed towards the ceiling (ready to fire should need) staring on at the three people outside. All of them silent as a church mouse. Now she was grateful she was dressed how she was. She would fit right in.

Victoria did not think they would look this frightening and rough. In fact, they were the kind of rough she would spot in the alleys of the city in Philadelphia and New York when she did travel there with her parents.

Alley men and these men before them both share the same stone-cold faces and deadly glowing eyes like rats in the night, reminding her of the British units that marched onto Benjamin's property, killed his son needlessly, shot her in the arm and took her away after burning the house down... also needlessly.

Finally, it made sense. She noted their dirty (some clean, she now sees), fringed, and baggy clothes that men in the wilderness would only wear. They were hunting and trapping men. Perhaps the men with the cleaner clothes were farmers like Benjamin.

"Cut the crap out, everyone. Lower them guns!" A shout loud enough from behind the bar making her shoulders jolt.

"That's right," Benjamin's tone echoed in authority. "I'm Colonel Benjamin Martin from Charles Town. I recognize some familiar and eager faces. If you're interested the South Carolina Militia is being called up, and I'm here to enlist every man willing to fight for the liberty of America."

"Colonel he is!" A young man around Gabriel's age scooted between some of the men inside and shouted to the door in support. "And God my witness, I give you my service. I will rid this country of those tyrannical men."

"You said _'God Save King George.'_ " An old man with a cane stepped forward, then, nearly leaning against the door because of his lack of strength in walking, drinking, weary, or maybe all three. Victoria blinks twice underneath her tilted hat and looks twice at the crazy man beside her. "Bile of a phrase. It can have 'ya hung by your toes no matter who you are. The throat 'round here if you're not shot first."

"You said that?" She hisses at Benjamin disbelievingly, after tearing her eyes off the even tougher looking old man who had every right to be suspicious. Her heart was beating in her ears uncontrollably.

He shrugs, glancing for once down at her, "Had to have got their attention somehow."

"Could've shoved her in first, eh _?"_ A familiar croaky voice of a drunk man in the back calls out making every man in sight let out a roar of laughter. Some women were in there because she could hear their chiding. _Perhaps not fit right in…_ she now thinks. That is if the kind of women she thinks is in there are walking about. Yes, her own wild days involved taverns (in the city, not country), but nice ones with men well-dressed. It was the revealing clothing of tavern wenches serving bar patrons that made it rowdy and exhilarating.

"Could use another woman in here!"

"Indeed," Victoria mutters just as Jean had before, and purses her lips tight that someone had noticed she was a woman, for the second time. In a strong way that is a great thing. For that she is relieved she is that obvious of a woman. "Thank you, Benjamin, for doing _not_."

"You asked for this, Tillie. _It'll be fine_ , just as you always say," Ben reminds her, looking away from her finally to face the old man with the cane, who gestured for him to come closer to question him. Two other annoyed men were beside the old guy and trying to coax him to move out the way and convince him that Benjamin is a patriot.

"And you did get our attention. Come set up right over 'ere, sir," other men mumbled in agreement as they kicked some chairs over to a now cleared and bare tavern table, after sliding it to the middle of the room, and brought some lit candelabras to it.

Victoria nearly squeaked unladylike at the swift grab of Major Jean Villeneuve's hand grabbing hers and placing it on his arm to escort her inside, an action she is not so used to lately. Her stunned eyes went right to his firm, reassuring face and silvery gaze conveying apology for startling her. Then as if he had no emotions, his squared jaw turned back forward with steely intentions on getting her in there safely and back out. He had the face of one of those gentlemen who would escort her to balls, and when it would get louder or any bit 'wild' as a ball could get, he would escort her out and take her home.

This has given her incentive to trust the Major alongside Benjamin. How could she not? The conversation they shared before departing the camp reoccurs in her mind as well. Though stand-offish, it does not cause his fatherly face to fade.

They were still standing out the door waiting for the remaining shady men to lower their guns, some returning to their conversation and seats while the fiddler begins a jolly tune once more filling the warm glowing tavern. There were even still a few individuals that held onto their guns regularly. Finally, after Benjamin walked in first, the French Major led her forward inside the tavern as the men dispersed into the crowd forming a jagged line.

Victoria swallowed uncomfortably at the once menacing eyes on them, and feeling another pain shooting through her lower abdomen.

Noticing her discomfort, and still arm-locked with her, Jean Villeneuve clears his throat while he surveyed the room better this time and closed the door behind him with his free hand. The moment he glanced left behind the woman's head, he sent one icy look up at a rather tall man who was eyeing the woman on his arm like a piece of meat while the said man retrieved the knife jutted in the middle of the wooden door. He is also one of the ones who still had a brandished gun in his right hand.

As soon as Jean Villeneuve recognized it, the man moved his pistol back into his belt, and he let out a low whistle right behind Victoria, making her freeze in place just noticing someone else near her. She avoided all eye contact with the six-foot-tall man who slowly made his way to the forming line. When she was sure he was gone, she casted a disgusted look his way.

"Madame," Jean tilts his hat to her before taking it off, placing it on the coat rack making her smile with a shake of her head. Victoria quickly got over that unsuitable moment for any woman's taste even if the whistle the man emitted was one of gratification at her looks. It was a refreshing compliment for once.

She took off her black hat as well and the Major took it kindly. Her 'disguise' wasn't perfected just yet, and they all knew, so it was no use in hiding beneath a hat.

"It shall be safe as long as you're within my sights."

"Thank you, Major. _Merci beau-coup_ , I should say," Victoria calmly resonated. She met his now attentive face, and his eyes lit up when she spoke this small French phrase to him. "I'm sure being _shabbily_ dressed as you said will keep most of the people away, however, I do not expect you to watch out for me all the time. I will not be a burden to anyone. It'll be my greatest effort."

He took in her words, weighing them and their thoughtfulness.

"But I shall, my lady. Disguised as a man or not, we will be all one militia, _non_?"

* * *

"Any bounty?"

Benjamin shakes his head no. "No scalp money this time, Rollins. But you can keep or sell me the muskets and gear of any Redcoat you kill."

The pock-marked face man with short-cropped dirty blonde hair sucked some snot down into the back of his throat before he spat his dip onto floor. Jean, Benjamin, and Victoria followed the sound and spit to the floor with disgusted looks of surprise. Rollins, however, caught Benjamin's placid gaze and began smirking as he picked up the quill, dipped it into the inkwell, and signed his name.

With a closer eye, he and every other man have appeared not as distrustful as Victoria had presumed, but they are all still too unkempt and rough. This didn't mean she does not trust them… She would have to get to know them or overhear how they talk at their camp. Then, just because the men are currently showing they aren't what they appear, she didn't trust them yet either.

After signing his name, Samuel Rollins, he sent a swift wink her way continuing to smirk and left the table with musket in hand. Maybe she was not so shabbily dressed after all…

Then the old man with circular glasses who was wary of them and Benjamin for some time, clutching the handle of a cane, wobbled forward surprising Victoria the most that he would enlist. His pointed, shrill eyes glaring into Benjamin made her stand stiff. Only once did his eyes glance to her with the same moody expression.

"They hanged my brother down in Acworth," he began to explain, his voice laced with the twang of an old grandfather. The kind of voice that has seen and heard much in his life. _But wait, in Georgia too!? Those bloody merciless redcoats have no end_. Victoria stares sorrowfully at the man for losing family.

"Every damned one of them Redcoats deserves to die."

"Sign on up," Benjamin nods his head in motion to the quill.

"-With all my ailments, I wouldn't make it through the first skirmish. No, sir. But you can have 'muh Negro. He'll fight in my stead."

She couldn't bite back a smirk when she hears the French major beside her choke on the rest of his turkey leg he carefully sat down for now. She has forgotten the French were against slavery and have abolished any sort of affiliation with it long ago. That is if her recently learned book knowledge is serving her right. She learned how to 'almost' perfectly read within the two years of living in the Martin home.

However, Victoria had one positive thought spring up and lift her spirit even more. Should the issue come up that she is told she shouldn't be involved in the militia she would have this to say: _A Negro can fight in an old man's stead, a wife can fight in her dead husband's stead…_

"Occam! Get over here. Ain't overly smart but he's strong as a bull." A dark colored man answers the old man's call and comes forward.

"Can you write?" Benjamin asks the man's slave who is not young as he was picturing. The man was aged but not as aged as his master. To Jean, the man displayed character and a strong build to handle a couple heavy muskets and carry out any orders.

"No, no sir," Occam answered sounding unsure. Beads of sweat were forming on his dark forehead. Victoria looked down at her feet, remembering herself answering to whoever asked she couldn't write. At least this man didn't have people chuckling at him dismissively or did he turn red in the face. Turning red in the face was a woman's major weakness in her mind.

"Well, then," Benjamin states as if it's obvious, approving of the man, "make your mark."

The old man grows demanding, "Why? I just signed him over to you."

"If you're willing, I'd like you to make your mark." Occam looked at his master reluctantly before picking up the quill seeing remaining ink on its end and leaving some scratches.

"That'll do," Benjamin nods his head in appreciation as did Jean Villeneuve, who even sent him a wink of appreciation. The wary slave nodded back in obligation, but the fear in his eyes was apparent.

For a change in sight, Victoria blinks at the gap in the line, and stunned that a child with bright red curly hair darts forward next. He places his chin on his folded arms at the edge of the table eagerly. Since when were children in taverns? It was supposed to be a _man's_ place along with the _tavern wenches_. Perhaps this is the only tavern outside of nice and reserved Charles Town that respects all. Benjamin did say this entire town gathers here nearly every night, but she assumed it was just every man in this town.

The tavern itself wasn't all that shabby and run down. It was certainly warm because everyone inside seemed to know each other well or acknowledged one another with a nod of the head every time they passed one another. The floorboards were well-trodden and covered with dried mud mixed with recently fresh mud, but it wasn't a horse's stable.

"I'll kill me some Redcoats," the spirited boy says with his baby teeth scattered in his mouth, some of the front ones missing.

"I believe you would," Benjamin replies sounding just as stunned and amused. His fatherly voice shining through making her feel more at ease since they were allowed in. "How old are you?"

"Not quite old enough," A fatherly man answers instead, coming forward steering his child out the way. "But his time will come."

"John Billings. I was hoping you'd turn up."

"There's a story going around about 20 Redcoats... got killed by a ghost, or some damn thing. Carried a Cherokee tomahawk," John Billings made a second look behind his longtime friend Benjamin Martin, as he took a swig of drink from the bottle in hand, where a young woman in men's clothing was standing near and talking to his son. Probably answering one of his forward questions.

"Aren't you a little old to be believing in ghost stories?" Benjamin turns the man's sights away from what's behind him, smirking at his friend's lengthy and detailed 'story' that has already been spread by word of mouth. Something that hasn't been done to his person since he was Gabriel's age.

"A lot of eclectic and durable individuals in here," Victoria mumbles quietly to a stiff Jean standing next to her. He was listening intently to what this John Billings fellow had said of this 'ghost'. She watches him set his dinner roll back to his plate as she finished talking. "I would have never suspected."

After the red-haired boy no older than five had spoken to her and left after telling her _that man_ is his 'Redcoat _killin_ ' father and asked why she was dressed like that, she felt more at ease with her own appearance. Especially when the boy took her hand and placed a wet kiss on her knuckle causing too much laughter erupt from around for her own good. Major Villeneuve saw at least and chuckled shortly.

Granted, she should and must not care what anyone thought for a change, she must blend in with this newly formed militia no matter what it took to serve, be able to move properly in the backwoods, fields, and swamps of South Carolina. It must be no different from the farm life and walking in the woods around the Martin home! It is all to earn her money she desperately needs, and of course help with all she has to offer to free a nation from a hard battle close to losing every day. Every bit helps, as she always told the Martin children.

Also why, Victoria can't be raising children not her own the rest of her life in Benjamin's home. Any other job not a chance, though, she will not mind continuing to farm. She has learned this life-saving trade by God's grace. But once she has money to her name, a house of her own or if she meets someone in between, then she can remarry.

She will not become a governess either for another person. She above all wants her own home (her aunt and uncle's abandoned home now a house filled with redcoats most likely) and to function how she wishes without involving her parents. Benjamin is all the guardian she needs.

It is only unless she did what any woman can do, rightfully. Changing her mind. And forgive her parents and ask for forgiveness herself. But this would make her not the free lady she strives to be. It would be the easy way out and not the way she is comfortable with.

It was when the boy ran back to his table, men laughing at his little wild self and silently commenting to the men next to them about her person, he ran up to his mother who looked her way with a kind smile and small wave. Politely, Victoria smiled in return and lifted her hand up at her side in a small wave. The red-haired mother of the boy, whose husband is enlisting, glowed with the independence they are fighting for and it furthered her ambition to feel content with herself and her choice. Even if it meant signing her own death warrant.

Each volunteer, such as this woman's husband, John Billings, was giving up his home safety, worldly possessions, and what incomplete freedom he has left.

The boy's mother had no qualm of a strange woman dressed not so feminine it seemed. In fact, how the mother dressed was no different from how Victoria dressed except the mother had on an actual dress, dark brown and worn with no vibrance, and her frizzy hair pulled back loosely with a white cap above her head.

" _Eclectic,"_ Jean breathes out. After listening in on what John Billings had to say of the Colonel sitting in front of him as he chewed some more of his turkey, and then nodding to John Billings before he left the signing, he turned briefly to Victoria. "I would say… unreceptive. Some."

"Unreceptive… I'm sure they'll let their guard down when they get to the swamp and adjust. Do you think different is good?" She asks him out of the blue, very unsure of how things will go at the swamp as she eyes everyone around her with new, worried thoughts. This is still an atmosphere she had never been in before. A very hostile one. Well, hostile looking men who are now calm, just on alert eyeing everyone's move in their respective clusters. More so them three for being the ones sticking out like a sore thumb in their military garb. And her…

"For everyone appearing rough and merciless, I would think that's what we needed. But they are all… not like you and Benjamin. _Some_ ," she adds making him chuckle once for repeating what he had just said.

His face turns completely to her now and she stares to her right at him, both remain standing in place with their bodies facing forward at the crowd.

"Of course. It's the difference that'll make us stronger," his French accent flows naturally like a rippling glade of lavender. "Not like the Colonel and myself, but they will give us a strength in areas we will lack. They are merciless to their enemies, surely. You've noticed that needed quality, so you are a very conscientious woman. That is good to know. But until I begin training, then we'll see if we are strong and merciless just as the British are."

 _Conscientious... That was the nicest compliment she has received from a stranger in a very long time._

"Rules of war. Of course. Wait, you're going to be training all those men, alone?" Her eyes widen realizing this.

He chuckled if not louder at this, "Madame, I am a well-seasoned officer from France. I've fought in many battles and have trained even the most precarious and languid of men. They are now generals, commanders, and commodores. _Marquis_ …"

During his listing of the men he has molded into people of affluence, only now she has remembered his own French aristocracy.

"I know you are well experienced, monsieur, forgive me. But I meant… all these men? Depending on how many Gabriel brings back…" she trails off gently. "We may be looking at—"

"—Thirty to forty," he finishes for her. His shoulders even shrugged like it was nothing. "Give or take some who leave the moment they set foot at the swamp. That is to be expected."

"Of course, but I hope that's not the case. My apologies for insulting you if I did, I am not doubting your strengths and skills for a second."

" _Non,_ you haven't," he nearly cut her off with a dismissive wave of his hand. His chest puffs out without control at her words. It's been some time since he has heard similar words like those from someone he dearly loved. "Let's cease thinking so, yes? Do not worry at all, we will have much more things of importance to worry about once we begin."

"You're tall," Benjamin exclaims with a registering nod towards the next man in line. His exclamation tearing the two behind him out of conversation, both finding their heads tilting an inch or two higher up. They certainly weren't paying attention to the previous men.

"Yeah I grow in my spare time. Used to drink a lot of milk," the beard stubbled man with a long nose sarcastically says, staring down at the signings so far, but makes no move for the quill yet. He clicks his tongue in silent deliberation.

Meanwhile Victoria did look him up and down seeing how giant he is and recognized him as the one who went to retrieve his knife out the door and whistle at her. He has a height 'that is challenging to any man he encounters', if she is sure by what she read and newspapers of the tall General Washington up north. In this man's case, he had some youth to him still which is what made him have a strange attractiveness. _The stable-boy_ appearance, as Nathan called the post-rider one time when Victoria was caught staring at that man for too long.

Victoria's mouth presses shut into a thin line, annoyed at Nathan even when he wasn't here! Goodness how much she loves that little boy like a little brother, but goodness how much he got under her skin. It sounds much like her and Gabriel's relationship now that she thinks of it.

But this man was suspicious looking like the others. Dull and worn frontiersman attire of faded whites, browns, and blacks, and then his large neck leading up to a chiseled face of pure fighting experience of some kind made him appear even more abrasive. He looked like he did more than plow a couple fields his whole life in this small town.

However, if she were six-foot-tall and above, and a man, she wouldn't join the militia because she'd certainly be targeted easily.

 _The anxiety she would have._

His dry, twangy voice shook her out of her inner musings and forgot she was staring at him far longer than necessary. And _not_ because of his small rugged charm, but she was deep in thought of what kind of person he is like they all have been looking at each man and trying to decipher. But she found he wasn't looking at her or noticed her staring rudely for so long. Not that he'd care about manners. The tall man was engaged with Benjamin.

"I must be the first to ask why she's with 'ya?" The man asked with a ghostly smirk. "Curly here and the men are thinking we have a whore. A Provision follower if you will."

"Or is she just for show 'an getting us to sign? Followers are for the real _bigger_ army," the man presumed to be Curly says behind the tall man, sending Victoria a solid wink to which she grimaces as he chuckles.

Jean's jaw tightened, and his eyes turned cold while she can only stare up at the current man on the other side of the table aloofly, who still doesn't look her way at all. She expected men would think that. But thinking all women who travel with the army are... _loose_? Then no, she wasn't expecting that.

"She is a lady in her own right and our militia's only _nurse_ we'll ever have, by my word," Benjamin put emphasis on this word as he folded his hands together. "The position was open to only her and she was right to accept. If she didn't, we'd have no help in treating wounds," He goes on to coolly say in her defense and telling the truth. Part of it, for now. "We expect no great casualties, however."

"I'm aware of how quick you plan to move," the tall man dismisses the man's defensiveness, and exhales in finality. He then picks up the quill, dips it in ink, and bends over—not commenting on that further- and signs his name rather too quickly. _No, he is confident with himself. Of course he would not think his height would hinder his ability to fight._

Victoria was now trying to guess his age, finally assessing the discourteous, youthful looking man is no older than thirty, unlike the men over forty of late. But he is like every other angry and drinking farmer in here. He was one of the ones who stood out, like the Rollins fellow and John Billings.

"Sk—Skunk, it says?" Benjamin watches the man scratch the paper and asks for guarantee, frowning at the one word that's not a name. 'Skunk', nods his head in such a slow fashion it looked as if he hasn't moved his head at all. His eyes suddenly appearing crazed leaving the three behind the table feeling unsettled.

"Is that short for something? A last name if I may inquire?"

"I go by my _sobriquet,_ " Skunk drawls the word out in a French accent, mocking the French Major if not insulting him. "It may not match with my height, but my smell, sure. My aim just as good makin' a target."

Victoria blushed beet red when she saw his hand go to his front, going to grab at himself it appeared but his hand went a millimeter to his right to pull up his satchel higher, showing a couple of skinned skunk hides with one of their tails sewn onto the bag. The other tail, larger, dangles loosely like a strap… Sure, enough his knife's handle was sticking out of the bag.

A bit of a Wildman this ' _Skunk'_ is.

"You threw the knife at us. You're Raskin then, John Billings mentioned you," Benjamin chuckles with the man in amusement. Though the two people behind the chuckling colonel were far from amused. Victoria finally saw some recognition in Benjamin's eyes on who this man is. _Raskin_ is his last name, but why on earth go by the name _Skunk_?

"We shall see," Jean bows his head at the man's personal claim ignoring the small talk and fails terribly at hiding his face of disgust with a curled-up lip. Whether the man meant his smell or his gun skills or that he just had a skunk sewn onto his satchel, it'll be known eventually.

When Skunk stalked off, the three of them stared after him baffled. Benjamin recovered the quickest and nodded approvingly.

"You don't need his full _real_ name, Colonel?" Jean asks the sitting man. "Even the man 'strong as a bull' had a real name put down."

"No, it's just us. He can always change it. At least he ain't a woman like someone else here, _Mr. Victor Lawson_ ," Benjamin waves his free left hand behind him motioning to Victoria who grumbles in protest. "It'll be good. He'll just be receiving payment under the name of _Skunk_."

"Whatever may float his boat," Victoria comments with a sigh over to Jean and decides to take a seat that was brought to her when they first arrived. "He made his mark, that's all that counts."

"Right," Benjamin said before speaking to the next men in line, Curly and Danvers they introduce themselves as.

"He has also insulted your honor, _madame_ , amongst others," Jean wasn't finished yet. He quietly turned to his left, stepped closer where she is sitting, and glanced down at her. Now she was sipping some ale lightly. Since she arrived, she only would drink water with some bread and butter. "I must apologize for you hearing such unpleasant things. It is nothing for a young woman or a refined man to hear."

For the first time, she genuinely let a warm smile slip on her lips, looking up at the Frenchman beside her who looks as if he has a million things going on in his head returning to staring at the long line of men still waiting to sign.

"I shall be fine, _monsieur_. I expected this. _Do not worry at all, we will have much more things of importance to worry about once we begin_."

"Quick. Very quick," Jean's lips shape into a broad, closed-mouth smile as he commented to himself. His neck heats up hearing her repeat his words exactly, again. He shook his head and grabbed his mug of ale and took a good long swig to help accept that these will be the men, and certain tenacious American woman, he will be around for some time.

* * *

As soon as the list became filled past the end of the parchment, a new one was made for another handful more who decided to join last minute, and then the announcement was made. Benjamin gestured for the willingly Jean to lead Victoria out to their horses before all the men would be piling out the door.

Carefully, they wove their way through the tables of the men remaining and few women, and Jean had given her the tricorn and cloak which he was kind enough to drape over her shoulders. The entire time she was prepping to leave, men in either direction were making cat-calls and improper comments her way.

One was definitely heard by the leaving pair's ears, and it was insinuating a nightly swim at their destination's end.

"If those comments don't stop, Major, I will feed them to the jaws of the swamp. The jaws of an alligator or a snake… or maybe a bear. Either way 'sleeping with the fish' as those sailors say. You shall see my true strength one day soon I believe," Victoria hisses to Jean Villeneuve who grins in agreement chancing a glance her way and winking with approval. His eyes sparked with the immediate liking once more that he had when he met her. So far, it's staying longer than before.

If Victoria were not in a painful state she would have blushed at his likeminded reaction and wink. Winks were always a weakness for her. The memories of having wild Patriot college boys wink at her in the streets when she was in Philadelphia or staying in New York with her parents all came flooding back. Now having a commanding French officer for the Patriot cause escorting her to her horse safely by the arm, and him winking at her good-naturedly, this was inconceivable.

"We move out at once!" Benjamin shouts from far behind them, gathering the entire tavern's attention. "Gather what you will want and need with you, food you can spare, and what your horse can carry. Above all bring all the weapons you have, and take your time saying your goodbyes."

* * *

Eventually, they have all reached the dark swamp. It is a dismal looking place, and the murky water came up to every horse's knees as they rode through the waters in a huddled line. A thick fog swirled around the water, any plant life resting above water, and scattered dead trees including tall, forbidding bald cypress trees protruding out of the water like large thorns.

"This place used to be breathtaking back in the glory days," a man with long, scruffy, shaggy hair breaks the silence. Before it was just the sound of lapping water and horses huffing.

Victoria looks over to who spoke much like everyone else had and recognized the man who Benjamin had called John Billings.

"That is very hard to imagine," another man responded. Victoria didn't turn to whoever else had chimed in on the now on-going conversation.

"I haven't seen a single snake yet, anyone else?"

"Black swamp snakes are always swimming around and up in the trees."

"Forget those little shits, cottonmouths are the ones to worry about." That man had to be Rollins, the dirty blonde-haired man who has no filter, but seems to have any kind of weapon imaginable on his person including his own tongue. He was riding one horse behind her. The man riding between them in their line was the well-spoken young man who was the first to speak up his support to joining the militia.

"Rollins, we do have a lady in our presence," the young man had glanced between Rollins and nodding towards the woman riding in front of him. Victoria ignored and remains staring straight at Major Villeneuve's back who was riding in front of her. "I understand we will all be cursing the moment we set foot on that mission and henceforth, but being an only woman surrounded by all of us will take its toll on her. It'd be most rude to ignore her susceptibilities."

Victoria's eyebrows furrowed in bewilderment at that word and finally turned to face the man behind her, who had gained the odd and confused looks from other men as well at that unknown and unused word.

"Sensibilities," the young man particularized. A collective sound of hums resonated from them all, save for an inaudible groan from the Frenchman, who's face was holding annoyance already.

This became the beginning of another stretch of silence until the sensible lady herself felt something hit the top of her hat and its weight fall over the side and onto her shoulder. She froze as she felt something long slithering against her front.

All who were behind her, including the well-spoken young man inhaled collective gasps with widened eyes.

Victoria chanced a glance onto her left shoulder and saw the small, skinny, wriggling black and red swamp snake which acted as if it did not belong on her shoulder. Holding the reins with her left hand, and bravely with her right hand, she reaches over her back for the head of the snake but settles for the upper body to be able to grab securely without it wriggling out of her grasp and falling onto her lap and horse.

After holding it away from her face to look at it is showing no defense, she then pulls her right arm back, and throws the black swamp snake onto the bark of a tree seven feet away. Its skinny body just slithered down and fell into the water with a mere droplet sound.

With that her right hand returns to the reins and she turns to the men behind her who were gaping at her with assorted emotions. Some of utter shock and some of relief. The young man behind her looked the most disturbed, however. He appeared as if the snake had fallen on him.

"Miss?" He asked her carefully.

Victoria pondered her response for a couple of seconds. None of the men had made effort to speak to her civilly nor did she speak to them at all. Then a mischievous thought crawled into her mind.

She shrugged, looking the young gentleman in the eyes. "That little shit ain't scaring me off."

Rollins started choking on his tobacco dip in his mouth while John Billings was the only one to howl with high-pitched laughter.

Finally, after nearly an hour and several swear words from men towards the back which did not faze Victoria one bit, they made it to the old Spanish mission. She was too absorbed in her surroundings which had grown darker since they first set foot in the swamp. The mission, however, was made of stones and in complete ruin save for the tall entrance still standing of the once vibrant structure according to John Billings.

The moment their horses galloped onto the land with relief much like their riders, men were jumping off and doing things as if they were already ordered. Some took the horses and tethered them to rubble and a fallen tree that had to be dragged from the back of the mission, some began gathering wood to make a fire, some went right to relieving themselves into the swamp water right in front of her, and others quickly went to claim their spots of sleep and stay for who knows how long.

Victoria had gotten off her horse on her own very carefully as to not throw her leg over and hit any man walking by, or threaten her lower extremities to explode with pain. She also removed her hat and let her hair loose of its tie, feeling safe to do so since they are no longer riding. While doing this, the well-spoken young man instantly approached her with a charming smile to take her horse.

"Now that we are settled on land, might I have the honor of knowing your name, Miss?"

"Victoria," she responds returning a shining smile, hiding her discomfort of the men facing the water right next to her and relieving themselves. Now where would she be allowed to relieve herself? "And you?"

"Nicholas Sampson. Well met," he politely nods his head to her with such manner that if his hands weren't both holding horse's reins, he would have removed his hat like Major Villeneuve and bow. And this was a tavern man! Now she can clearly see he is a humble farmer.

Once he departs from her, she sidesteps away from the strange men still lurking about near her after relieving themselves, and heads to where Benjamin is underneath the tall structure. The man thankfully looks her way as if about to look for her, and when he sees her walking towards him, he shakes his head and folds his arms in front of his chest. He without a doubt has plans in mind for her already.

 **A/N: Finally nothing has popped up unexpectedly and distracting me from writing and updating. I apologize for not updating the next day as I said I would two months ago. Thankfully I didn't because this chapter was a beast to tackle. This set the course for the future character interactions and overall plot. Now I am working on the next chapter, and it will NOT be two months til the next update. I promise that. I am dying myself waiting for the love triangle to start, and Victoria to make her mark.**

 **Well, the tall tavern man Skunk has been introduced, and Jean and Victoria are warming up to each other. By the way, Nicholas Sampson is completely made up. I saw a couple of young people in the tavern scene after re-watching it for a billionth time, so I decided on one of them and gave him a name and place in the story.**

 **The next chapter will be a continuation of this chapter since their arrival to the old mission was very prominent in the movie (to me at least). Until then, and thank you!**


	9. Chapter 8: Settling In

**Chapter 8: Settling In**

With her sights set on Benjamin to speak with him, John Billings waves her over.

"Oi! You, Miss…" Once she finds who it was that called for her, she made her way over to him.

In a matter of minutes, the ground of rubble and moss became covered with footprints of mud and water, and tents were pitched in lines and patches. Small fires and lanterns were even lit up which did wonders of bringing more light to the swamp. While the moon is shining bright and full, the people now inhabiting the mission were awake as if it were daylight.

Then again many couldn't fall asleep just yet. Not everyone adjusted so quickly, especially the farmers which are many and now recognizable by how they talk and act. The ones who had adjusted quickly were getting rations ready, chatting, soundly sleeping, or cleaning their weapons.

"Victoria, sir. What's wrong?" She told him her name and asked quietly much like everyone is talking in low tones.

Billings chuckles so loudly it made her crack a smile at his hilarity, but she did raise an eyebrow in question, "Nothing. Testin' you for when you get wounded men. You pass."

"Huzzah," she mumbles with a sigh making him and now the tall man, 'Skunk', next to him cooking some sausage in a pan chuckle as well. "Hopefully there won't be any anytime soon. At all would be wonderful."

"Can't promise you that, 'hon, but I wouldn't worry too much for snake bites. You just may keep those little shits away before they even touch one of us," Billings mentions the earlier conversation with good humor.

"Now I wouldn't be so sure about that, Mr. Billings. I'm not going anywhere near a cottonmouth or would I pick it up as I did that little thing. That one I knew wouldn't bite."

The two men hum in agreement, nothing else looking to be said so she goes to leave comfortably before John Billings talks to her once more in the strong southern accent many of these men have.

"Where are you from? I don't recall a Victoria in our town."

"I'm from Philadelphia. But Charles Town is where I did most of my growing up. I live near Benjamin." She felt uncomfortable saying she lived with him.

"Well that explains it then. He had chosen you to come along to aid us. He told me you've been friends for some time. A bit younger than I thought you'd be when he mentioned you before."

Victoria noticed the man looked inquisitive and snuck a glance with him over at Benjamin who was speaking with Jean Villeneuve, who then turned from the man and went off in a fury. Quickly diverting her eyes from the fuming Frenchman, she returns to looking at John who was still looking behind her at the French Major storming past them.

"I'm John Billings if you didn't know, also old friends with the ghost," John smiles then, tilting his three-cornered hat to her in greet, because he used the nickname Benjamin was dubbed. "And this here is Skunk. We call him Raskin every now and then."

Victoria nods her head as her eyes looked over and slowly travel up to Skunk's… piercing light-green eyes that take her breath for but a moment. She gives the tall man a little smile which he does as well surprisingly looking down at her because everyone is short to him. A 'plain' smile, she should say. He is looking anxious to do something else but knowing he can't because there is nothing to do but settle in and adjust to the poor conditions of the swamp island.

His mouth parted to say something hasty but shut it when he seemed to rethink his words.

"Raskin or Skunk you can call me. You were brave to come out here," Skunk managed to say letting his smile fall to a serious expression. His light rumbling, dry, and southern accented voice sounded like he hasn't had anything to drink for hours. But that's just him.

"So were the rest of you," she simply responds not wanting to talk too much. The camp was too eerily silent.

"Do you plan on staying for the entire war? What's left of it?" John asks once more.

"Yes. So help me God," she replies.

"Good to hear, good to hear…" John trails off wanting to speak further.

Then hearing water lap, the three of them tensed up and their gazes darted to the swamp. It was not a threat but it's a sight not so cheerful. Victoria stares on in relief and anxiety at Gabriel Martin leading in his enlisted men. At least there are other men to add to their thirty-something numbers… but most of them are _too_ young. The well-seasoned men made point to declare this all too loudly in rowdy laughter.

 _"Look at the little gentlemen!"_

 _"Where are their mothers?"_

 _"You need to shave!"_ One mocks the young boys who are nowhere near to growing facial hair.

 _"They don't even shave!"_ Another bellowed with laughter at the same time.

Gabriel Martin removed his tricorn and jumped off his mount, looking at his surroundings not expecting the conditions to look rougher than all the chief army camps he's been in. They are still setting up, _hopefully_. Now with his added men and boys from Pembroke, they will find some remaining space on this island. He does manage to recognize some men who are farmers, the rest were already unclean and barefooted men stretching, and shirtless men cleaning themselves with rags of swamp water. One of them an older man who was trimming his toe nails with a knife he will probably use to kill a redcoat…

 _Do all men use their knives on their feet?_ Victoria thinks to herself. She glanced away from Gabriel and had noticed this gross man. _My husband sure didn't. He didn't have any knife._

With sights set on his father through the archway of the old, once-standing church, Gabriel sees _her_ , standing with an unreadable expression like the other distrustful looking men around her. Not the kind of company she should be around, and not the kind she is certainly not used to being around. But he had to admit in his own mind, she is a sight for sore eyes just like his dear Anne.

"What are you doing here?" Gabriel hisses pacing straight up to Victoria in disbelief with old anger in his blue eyes, greatly reminding her of his father's reaction.

The tall man leaning against the stone column had paused his stirring in his pan and straightened defensively when he marched up into Victoria's face as brash as he had. Gabriel glanced up at the tallest man he's seen so far, once with no challenge in his eyes, and returned to hissing at the woman, his friend, who disturbs him now.

"What are you doing here?" she repeats with an insulted intake of breath. "You're back too soon! You're supposed to have gone to two other towns to recruit—"

"—Never mind that, I asked first," Gabriel bit back quietly.

"What do you mean what am I doing here?" She asks clueless.

"You didn't back out?"

"Why, yes, I did, obviously," She smirks in response at the same anger of his father on his face: inhaling nostrils expanding and closing, with a crumpled forehead and squared jaw pushed forward like an angry hog. "I decided to take a stroll through the swamp before I return. I'm enjoying some fresh air, darling."

"Like the farm air wasn't fresh?" Gabriel asks with sarcasm. "That's a long stroll. When will it end? Really?"

"Whenever the war ends or heaven forbid if I die. A bit too late for that conversation, _Gabe._ "

"Father is she serious?" Gabriel splutters looking between the two of them before marching over to his father.

"When is a woman not serious," she added with a huff behind his back. Gabriel ignored John Billing's high-pitched sniggers, who patted Victoria on the shoulder kindly before leaving her be and following Gabriel to sit by his father.

"Always is," his father pays not a mind to his son's complaints of Victoria. His focused eyes don't leave his late son's toy soldier being melted into a musket ball. "Now, how many did you get?"

"Twelve."

Ben looked up at this number. He figured that the other two towns did not offer their services. "Good."

"These men _, and woman_ ," Gabriel adds twice more, glaring at said woman behind him. "They're not the sort we need."

"They're exactly the sort we need. They've fought this kind of war before."

John Billings glances to Benjamin across the miserable fire pit, "What about me? Am I one of that sort?"

"Hell, no. Your sort gives that sort a bad name," Ben looked up at this, smirking at his old neighbor who continues to find some amusement in this dark place during these dark times.

* * *

After John Billings had left her side, leaving her with a despondent Skunk resuming to look at the men and young boys joining the militia who were looking around regretfully and downtrodden. Victoria ended up leaving his side to walk up to the new arrivals with a hopefully kind face unlike many of the emotionless ones. Rollins was sitting near where she was standing, and already playing around with his musket going to go hunt some more kill soon. He was the only one looking ready to fight.

But the young boys didn't help their cause of being the victims of taunts when their eyes snapped right to her, in surprise, looking like they've been saved.

 _"Hey! They got their mother now!"_

 _"Maybe she'll let me be the husband! She's lonely ain't she?"_

"Ignore them, gentlemen. I'm Victoria, the militia's nurse, and here for anything else drastic," she tried to add feeling like she should hint at her duty here she intends to do. "Our Colonel is over there, Benjamin Martin. Find a place where you can, some will be moved to make more room should need be and settle in for the night. We won't be doing anything 'til morning."

"Thank you, Miss," one of the boy's father's tilts their hat to her appreciatively, quite at a loss of words as well for seeing a woman here.

"Thank goodness we have some decency here," a healthy old man dressed in all black with a defining white collar, a reverend, removes his wide brimmed hat and places it above his heart in generous acknowledgement. "Thank you. It sounds well by me, Miss Victoria."

 _"Aw, I was hopin' we can do something tonight!"_ One of the men called her way making many of the other men who weren't laughing before laugh, except for the civil ones like Benjamin, Jean, John Billings, Nicholas… Rollins? And even Skunk, who was currently walking over to her with a saunter. The skunks on his satchel dangling, and the pan of meat in his hand.

 _Never_ in her dreams did she picture being around men like these men. And having a man going by Skunk approach her casually while cooking food in a pan. This would be not the greatest of sights or acceptable in the upper-class areas she was used to. He may not be very talkative, and stand-offish despite his blank face, but he was trying like John Billings just had. _One of the nice ones, now,_ she repeats in her mind.

"Enough, all of you!" Jean Villeneuve bellowed finally. His French accent filled with rage making Victoria's heart skip a beat out of fright. She knew from that point on to not ever make him angry, not that she ever would. "You won't be laughing tomorrow in training."

 _"Do we have to be reminded?"_ one of them complained but in 'good' humor. Just like that the atmosphere shifted back to the calmness it was before. The sound level a notch louder with the added twelve men.

"Can I help you?" She turns and looks up to Skunk who stops in front of her with an added scuff of his high red-brown boots against the stone ground.

"I was about to ask you the same. The men are making you uncomfortable. And no, I don't need your help," The corner of his lip quirk up in amusement when she asked that once more. The woman is ready for her duty. Everyone can see how energetic and alert she is. Just enough to drive all those other rowdy men wild.

"Maybe they are a little. I expected it as part of adjusting. I don't really need your help either, right now," she shrugs, crossing her arms unsure of what he's trying to get out of her. "But you looked like you wanted to tell me something else."

"Would 'ya like some food? You haven't eaten since you got our lot enlisted, I'm sure. It's not the best tavern food that could have been given..."

She gladly takes the sausage from him with her forefingers carefully, feeling its hot still, "I haven't, thank you."

"No, thank you," his eyes look her up and down creepily innocent. "The first fine woman to ever sample my meat."

Victoria spluttered at his supposed insinuation, and choked a bit too loud on what she was eating without a cup of water… which has not been collected yet as far as she knows…

"I beg your pardon?"

He chuckles at the response he elicited. His eyes sparkling for all the wrong reasons, but little did she know she was wrong. It was just his humor. "Nothing to beg about. But if I may say, not beg, since you're just around us sweetheart, a little less every now and then like a nightgown would be a nice view. You'd probably be comfier, too."

Her eyes narrowed on her fuming face, hearing some of the men nearby laugh at what he said. _He was not who he appeared, truly._

"I'm sure it would. But this is war, sir, not paradise. Nor is it a safe place to even wear a dress. Get your head out the clouds," she snubs all she has to say with gritted teeth as if she is talking to one of the Martin children. Particularly wise young Nathan.

"I ain't no _sir_ ," he grumbles with an attitude after he had overheard men's choruses of 'ooh's' at her remark. "Not that old, ever, woman."

 _"He's a skunk!"_ One of them had sniggered in the area the tall man is heading off to with a sudden temper.

In just the first day, not even a day, she got swept into the decorum of soldier life. Or is it man's life?

It is not paradise as one may think. Her hands will be full in no time.

Seeing no point in standing around for nothing, she went to join Benjamin and John Billings by the 'Captain's' fire. There she will ask about drinking water and finally speak with her one and only friend who she trusts with her life.

* * *

"There you are. About time you plop down," Benjamin looks up at her with a gentle smile. She tore him from whatever reverie he was having. "Causing trouble already."

"Not that I already had before," Victoria scoffs as she carefully lowers herself onto a log. The wrists of her instinctively flick upwards at her sides, as the proper and gentle lady in her caused her to do so.

Benjamin can see the faintest look of regret in her gaze for a moment until he catches her sighing wearily.

"This awful fog may be a sign because of you," Ben jokes back. "Hopefully not a bad omen."

She laughs, finally. Thinking to herself ' _Oh I am everything but a bad omen.'_

"What's on your mind, _Tillie_?" John Billings unexpectedly asks her after finding some humor much like her. Maybe her presence was already uplifting everyone's mood. However, they don't know she was expected to follow them everywhere should they travel around. "Too much swamp for you?"

She shakes her head, still laughing a little from Benjamin's comment on the muggy fog just before he asked her. "No. Not yet anyways. Just, have we—have they really fought this kind of war before? Against a king, fighting for our freedom?"

"You remember the French and Indian War, do you?" Billings asked her as he bent over to pick up a twig and toss it into the fire.

"I was born during it. Of course, some of my childhood was part of it. But I don't remember anything this grave." She missed Benjamin's sharp inhale at this recognition. He knew they were many years apart, but her being born and practically a child during the Seven Year's War he was fighting in? In his prime? He suddenly felt sick.

She saw his face contort tightly wondering if it what something she mentioned and shouldn't have. But John Billing's response didn't show any malice.

"No, we haven't fought a war like this one, 'hon. Every war is different. But we sure have the experience and the same old pitchforks. Not all the tools the Brits have but we damn sure have the heart."

"That's too true," she comments before Benjamin finally speaks up, with a low breath.

"The only woman in our militia is already influencing you."

John Billing's smile drops to a frown, and with a scarred eyebrow shooting up in inquiry as he looks to Victoria and then to his friend. He understood his hidden meaning.

"Oh? _In_ the militia is she? I knew something was up when she was with you at the enlistment."

" _Oui,_ " Jean answered first, standing behind the sitting woman still in his full light blue and white uniform and tall black boots. His hands folded in front of him respectfully and relaxed. "Even if she were but a nurse she is one of us. Where we go she goes."

Victoria's eyes go to the ground hearing this. This sounded like something Benjamin would say, not the Major. Perhaps this was what the two of them discussed on horseback earlier in the afternoon. Somehow Benjamin swayed Jean into accepting her place here fighting. Did he tell him about the incident? And the _ghost's_ attack she was involved in?

Ben responds quickly then, but not sounding defensive. He keeps his voice quiet so only them four can hear. If anyone did want to hear they could listen in all they want. The men will put the pieces together eventually, but if not by morning, they'll find out.

"She will be in disguise in her 'hiding' whilst we travel, and on our travels an envoy between us and the main army," he began, looking to Victoria with deliberation. "The colonel who gave me my commission knows of her. Tillie will be trained to properly use a musket and field maneuvers. She's not going to stay here should anyone find this hiding spot, but should she be ordered to remain, she won't be defenseless. My goal is to keep her hidden amongst our ranks and moving as much as possible."

John Billing's nodded thoughtfully, conjuring up some saliva in his mouth to spit out whilst looking back over to the woman.

"Hidden from what?"

Victoria swallows, looking down at her feet growing pale from nerves of even thinking of Colonel Tavington. Why could he possibly want her?

"Yes, hidden from what?" Major Villeneuve asks carefully as well looking down at the woman in front of him. He wasn't even told all of it. _Guess he wasn't swayed by her part in Ben's ghost story. Then what? Was he just easily accepting of her? Or was he doing so out of good manners? Even if this, she was warmed by the thought._

Benjamin realizes his mistake and chooses to remain silent. Only communicating with his eyes to both men as he looked to Victoria respectfully.

"Hidden from exactly what we're hiding from right now," Benjamin's words cause her to lift her head gently. "That's her story. She'll tell you herself when she's comfortable."

"No telling when that'd be," Victoria scoffs, gesturing with her head over her shoulder to the rowdy men from earlier. Little did she know Skunk was amongst the rowdy ones now who she gestured to.

"It must be soon. We can't be kept in the dark for too long or else we'd be in danger as much as you are," Jean informs her making her swallow once more, but her gaze never left the men.

"Nah forget them. They're a bunch of tankheads when women are around. You have a full plate, lady. You knew what you were choosing to do though," John Billing's spits out finally with actual spit falling near his boot. Not tobacco like Rollins' chews.

Victoria and Jean glanced down in unison with blank expressions, hiding their disgust which Ben can tell.

" _Us sort_ may not be so accepting of it, but they'll _have to_ I'm sure," John kindly continues to try comforting her with his words, which is doing some better. "I accept it because I know Martin doesn't play any bad tricks like that and it would be wrong to be against him. You can damn sure trust me, darling."

Victoria could only sit silently, and nod at his words unsure of what to say. Just like that he was accepting of her too. Now if only others would be like that. Little was she aware of to begin with, Jean standing behind her was still glancing between Billings and the spit on the ground. Then the Frenchman's eyes had continued glancing around the soiled and stone ground as if seeing it for the first time. The grounds suddenly seemed filthier than when he arrived.

John Billings catches this finally and his high-pitched laughter fills the swamp causing others to catch its contagiousness.

"Ain't no Versailles, Major!"

"No. Definitely not," Jean utters out with an amused shake of his head despite his impartial grimace.

"Sir! Drinking water has been gathered," one of the men she hasn't met yet came up to them. He must have been near her age as well.

"Good man, we'll be sure to gather more tomorrow before training," Benjamin nods his head to him. "I'll go get your canteen filled up for you, Tillie."

"Alright, thank you. Well, I may retire for the night, gentlemen. I'll see y'all in the morning," Victoria nods her head to Benjamin and Billings whilst coming to a stand, nodding once more to Jean, then crossing her arms she fled slowly under the arch, to the left towards her tent. After she stooped to the ground and crawled in, only Benjamin could see from a distance and know she was clutching the arm that was shot by Colonel Tavington.

* * *

Victoria was turned away from the flap of her tent, laying on her left side staring at her bag of belongings which holds all she has left after losing her aunt and uncle's home, and the burned down Martin home.

With her coat discarded and wearing nothing but a loose hunting shirt that once was worn by Aunt Charlotte's husband, her left-hand traces along her right arm, hovering over the healing bullet wound with fear.

A man clearing his throat startled her to fall flat on her back, all to see a kneeling Benjamin Martin holding her canteen out to her.

"This should be enough for the night and morning. Did you need anything for your wound?" His eyes leave hers to glance down at her right arm. He reaches for it but she pulls it to herself.

"Thank you," she took her canteen. "No, I do not."

"Tillie…" Ben places a warm hand on her arm, leaning further into the tent. "You will let me know if you're ever in pain, right?"

"Of course I would," Victoria spares a glance up at him. His eyes shone with concern and care. Maybe even that fleeting look of love he's been trying so hard to diminish. She's not a fool to notice this, it may even be one of the most awkward things that can't be avoided in this camp, at least for now. With all the strength she has, she's trying to keep a level head and hold no dread for what's to come.

"Sleep well, then. You did well today. Goodnight." Ben backed out of her tent on his heels, and stood up to leave.

"Goodnight."

 **A/N: Yay I'm back! This story is one of my favorites to write about. Now how about that Skunk and Victoria meeting? I can't wait to write more of him. *Spoiler alert because I can't help myself, he's going to be a sweetheart! The next chapter will be up soon! :)**


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